BV  4012  . H7  1923 

Hough,  Lynn  Harold,  1877- 

Twelve  merry  fishermen 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2019  with  funding  from 
Princeton  Theological  Seminary  Library 


https://archive.org/details/twelvernerryfishe00houg_0 


OTHER  BOOKS  BY  DR.  HOUGH 

THE  EYES  OF  FAITH 

THE  MAN  OF  POWER 

IN  THE  VALLEY  OF  DECISION 

THE  MEN  OF  THE  GOSPELS 

THE  LURE  OF  BOOKS 

ATHANASIUS:  THE  HERO 

THE  THEOLOGY  OF  A  PREACHER 

THE  QUEST  FOR  WONDER,  AND  OTHER  PHIL¬ 
OSOPHICAL  AND  THEOLOGICAL  STUDIES 

THE  LITTLE  OLD  LADY 

THE  CLEAN  SWORD 

THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  THE  PROTESTANT 
REFORMATION 

FLYING  OVER  LONDON 

THE  OPINIONS  OF  JOHN  CLEARFIELD 

A  LITTLE  BOOK  OF  SERMONS 

THE  INEVITABLE  BOOK 


TWELVE 

MERRY  FISHERMEN 


By  ,/ 

LYNN  HAROLD  HOUGH 


P  I 


THE  ABINGDON  PRESS 

NEW  YORK 


CINCINNATI 


Copyright,  1923,  by 

LYNN  HAROLD  HOUGH 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


.IN  MEMORY  OF  MY  FRIEND 


DR.  HUGH  JOHNSTON 

THE  PASTOR  OF  GREAT  CHURCHES  IN  CAN¬ 
ADA  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES;  FOR  OVER 
HALF  A  CENTURY  A  POWERFUL  AND  GRA¬ 
CIOUS  MINISTER  OF  THE  GOSPEL;  A  MAN 
WHO  WON  LOVE  AND  ADMIRATION  IN  EVERY 
CITY  WHERE  HE  EXERCISED  HIS  MANIFOLD 


MINISTRY 


I 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Just  at  the  Beginning .  9 

I.  Coordinating  the  World .  11 

II.  A  Man  Among  His  Books .  18 

III.  The  Man  and  the  Machine  ....  25 

IV.  Preaching  and  Paganism .  32 

V.  The  Jew  and  Civilization .  40 

VI.  The  Furtive  People .  47 

VII.  Commerce  and  Character .  56 

VHI.  The  Creative  Past .  63 

IX.  The  Color  Scheme  of  the 

World .  70 

X.  General  William  Booth .  78 

XI.  “Saint  William  and  the  Dragon”  87 

XII.  The  Scholar  and  the  Prophet  . .  95 

XIII.  The  Faith  Once  Delivered  and 

Often  Interpreted . 103 

XIV.  Philosophy,  Exposition  and  So¬ 

cial  Passion . 112 

XV.  Personality  and  Philosophic 

Thought . 120 


JUST  AT  THE  BEGINNING 

It  has  been  the  happy  fortune  of  the  author 
of  these  tales  of  a  ministerial  club  to  belong 
to  a  good  many  such  organizations.  The 
Alpha  Kappa  Club,  of  Brooklyn;  The  Jolly 
Friars,  of  short  life  but  of  bright  memory;  the 
Monday  Club,  of  New  York;  the  Eclectic 
Club,  of  Baltimore,  perhaps  the  oldest  minis¬ 
terial  club  in  America;  the  Interchurch  and 
the  Monday  Clubs,  of  the  same  city;  the  more 
formal  Society  of  Biblical  Research,  of  Chi¬ 
cago;  and  the  delightful  Wranglers  Club,  of 
Detroit,  have  given  him  many  opportunities 
to  observe  this  aspect  of  ministerial  life.  In 
none  of  the  chapters  of  this  book  is  there  any 
attempt  to  describe  a  particular  club  or  to 
portray  a  particular  person.  But  doubtless  all 
of  these  clubs  have  had  a  share  in  creating  the 
atmosphere  of  the  circle  called  the  Twelve 
Merry  Fishermen. 

L.  H.  H. 


s 


I.  COORDINATING  THE  WORLD 


The  Twelve  Merry  Fishermen  were  a  group 
of  ministers.  And  this  was  the  name  they 
gave  to  a  ministerial  club  which  they  were 
willing  to  admit  was  unique  among  such 
organizations.  It  represented  pretty  much 
every  conceivable  point  of  view,  and  the  men 
were  united  bv  fundamental  earnestness  and 

t/ 

desire  to  have  a  share  in  the  making  of  a 
better  world  rather  than  by  a  common  bond 
of  opinion.  They  respected  each  other  in  spite 
of  their  differences  and  the  tenacity  with  which 
some  of  them  adhered  to  particular  views  and 
the  vigor  with  which  they  expressed  them. 
They  met  on  one  Monday  of  every  month  “to 
enjoy  an  intellectual  shower  bath,”  as  Bowen 
Tillman,  busy  minister  of  a  downtown  church, 
expressed  it.  They  all  lived  in  or  near  one  of 
America’s  largest  cities,  and  from  the  head 
of  a  great  institutional  church  ministering  to 
every  aspect  of  the  need  of  the  metropolis  to 
the  theological  professor  from  a  nearby  divinity 
school  and  the  pastor  of  a  flourishing  rural 

community,  they  were  men  alive  to  the  finger- 

11 


12  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


tips.  We  will  not  introduce  them  in  any 
formal  way.  We  will  just  secrete  the  reader 
in  a  dim  corner  of  the  private  dining  room 
where  they  met  and  let  him  watch  and  look 
and  listen  and  judge  for  himself. 

It  was  the  first  meeting  after  the  Presidential 
election.  And  there  was  a  touch  of  somewhat 
grim  irony  about  the  fact  that  at  this  par¬ 
ticular  meeting  Monroe  Burton,  who  had  a 
taste  for  international  affairs,  and  an  abiding 
idealism  which  glowed  all  the  brighter  in  days 
of  contemporary  disillusionment  and  cynicism, 
had  read  a  paper  on  the  subject  “The  Present 
Status  of  the  League  of  Nations.”  It  had 
been  a  particularly  well-wrought-out  piece  of 
work,  going  rapidly  over  the  history  of  vari¬ 
ous  attempts  to  organize  the  life  of  the  world, 
paying  its  disrespects  to  the  Holy  Alliance 
which  followed  the  Napoleonic  wars,  and  then 
deftly  pointing  out  the  steps  by  which  the 
present  organization  was  created,  the  world¬ 
wide  enthusiasm  with  which  the  idea  was 
greeted,  and  the  tide  of  reaction  which  fol¬ 
lowed  the  meeting  of  the  Peace  Conference. 
The  final  paragraphs  were  given  to  a  closely 
reasoned  setting  forth  of  the  elements  in  the 
situation  which  made  it  impossible  that  the 


COORDINATING  THE  WORLD  13 


idea  should  die,  and  made  inevitable  some 
sort  of  world  organization.  The  last  sentence 
was  particularly  pregnant:  “Civilization  can¬ 
not  survive  another  World  War  with  all  the 
increased  potencies  of  destruction  which  are 
now  within  our  reach.  And  it  will  soon  be¬ 
come  evident  that  some  sort  of  world-wide 
organization  is  the  only  way  to  save  the  intel¬ 
lectual  and  moral  and  spiritual  gains  of  the  last 
three  thousand  years.” 

Bowen  Tillman,  busy  with  the  problems  of 
his  own  church,  an  efficiency  expert  who  made 
his  organization  the  marvel  of  all  the  men 
who  witnessed  its  activities,  spoke  first. 

“That’s  a  real  paper.  But  what  Burton 
doesn’t  see  is  that  the  idea  is  dead.  The 
election  proves  it.  We  are  going  to  attack 
domestic  problems  and  let  other  people  try 
the  Atlas  act.  We  have  developed  a  new 
modesty.  We  are  going  to  let  some  of  the 
problems  of  giants  wait  until  the  giants  come. 
One  man  tried  to  be  a  giant.  He  only  suc¬ 
ceeded  in  breaking  his  own  health  and  creating 
a  nation-wide  hostility.  I  know  a  corner  of 
this  big  town  which  must  be  made  Christian. 
That  comes  pretty  near  to  being  my  share 
of  the  remaking  of  the  world.” 


14  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


Waldo  Bryant  spoke  out  very  quickly  and 
with  a  note  of  rather  unusual  emotion  in  his 
voice.  He  knew  more  history  than  any  other 
man  in  the  club,  and  he  made  his  pulpit  a 
place  where  you  had  a  sense  of  meeting  the 
ages. 

“There’s  just  one  trouble  with  what  you 
say,  Tillman,”  he  declared.  “If  the  world 
doesn’t  get  steadied  a  bit,  you  will  have  no 
corner  left  in  which  to  work.  The  fire  which 
had  been  put  out  may  not  endanger  your 
town.  But  it  isn’t  really  out  after  all.  The 
embers  are  smoldering  all  over  the  world; 
and  if  it  burns  up  again,  you  cannot  expect 
your  corner  to  escape.  For  the  sake  of  the 
very  thing  you  do  so  well  you  ought  to  be 
keen  about  the  League  to  coordinate  the  life 
of  the  world.” 

“I  have  just  been  reading  Dr.  Kelman’s 
book  on  international  Christianity,”  said  Morris 
MacDonald,  professor  of  systematic  theology  in 
a  nearby  school  of  the  prophets.  “Sir  William 
Robertson  Nicoll’s  review  of  the  book  in  the 
British  Weekly  set  me  going.  Then  the  book 
itself  quite  captured  my  attention.  Kelman 
makes  you  feel  the  truth  of  what  Bryant  has 
just  said.  One  bit  of  a  paragraph  stays  in 


COORDINATING  THE  WORLD 


15 


my  mind  and  sometimes  I  think  of  the  words 
when  I  am  awake  at  night:  ‘There  are  those 
who  ask,  “What  is  the  use  of  talking  of  Utopia 
when  so  many  people  have  only  hovels  to  live 
in?”  And  the  answer  is  that  if  this  Utopia 
does  not  come,  we  shall  not  even  have  hovels 
to  live  in,  but  only  graves!’  ” 

Hunter  Morrison  a  young  radical,  one  of 
whose  friends  said  laughingly  that  he  preached 
the  gospel  according  to  the  New  Republic,  now 
spoke  up. 

“It  is  not  a  League  of  Nations  which  America 
has  repudiated,”  he  said.  “It  is  the  particular 
League  of  Nations  which  is  tied  up  with  the 
treaty  of  peace.  Before  we  entered  the  war 
Mr.  Wilson  once  got  some  progressive  legis¬ 
lation,  and  the  price  he  paid  for  it  was  what 
has  been  called  the  worst  pork-barrel  Con¬ 
gress  since  the  Civil  War.  He  always  does 
that  sort  of  thing.  He  seeks  something  good 
and  he  pays  a  price  for  it  which  no  man  has 
a  right  to  pay.  The  new  Administration  will 
find  that  America  demands  our  taking  our 
place  in  an  organized  life  of  the  world.  But 
it  will  get  us  free  forever  from  the  reactionary 
concessions  of  the  Paris  Conference.” 

Tom  Tabor  had  been  moving  a  little  rest- 


16  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


lessly  in  his  chair  while  these  words  had  been 
uttered.  Now  he  took  up  the  gauntlet: 

“You  are  all  forgetting  that  the  League  of 
Nations  is  very  much  alive  and  that  it  is 
functioning  effectively.  It  has  already  proved 
that  it  can  prevent  war,  and  that  it  has  mighty 
forces  behind  it.  After  all,  it  was  only  a 
beginning  that  was  represented  by  the  work 
in  France.  It  was  just  the  first  step.  Ample 
room  was  made  for  change  and  improvement. 
If  we  had  done  our  duty,  the  whole  world 
would  be  now  organized  in  such  a  fashion  that 
we  could  begin  to  talk  with  reality  of  the 
permanence  of  peace.” 

Henry  Alton  was  regarded  as  the  most  ju¬ 
dicial  member  of  the  little  group.  Very  often 
the  others  addressed  him  as  “Judge.”  Now 
he  spoke,  and  there  was  a  little  hush  of  expect¬ 
ancy  as  he  began: 

“After  all,  recriminations  are  useless,  and 
often  worse,”  he  said.  “The  strategy  which 
turns  a  noble  dream  into  an  effective  achieve¬ 
ment  was  denied  to  the  President.  The  whole 
idea  became  involved  in  a  mass  of  confusion 
and  prejudice.  But  go  beneath  the  surface 
and  you  will  find  a  deep  and  international 
interest  in  the  coordination  of  the  world.  It 


COORDINATING  THE  WORLD  17 


is  the  missionary  enterprise  turned  into  prac¬ 
tical  politics.  And  such  mighty  human  forces 
have  united  with  this  deep  Christian  motive 
that  in  some  fashion  it  is  destined  to  prove 
irresistible.  As  there  was  the  day  of  the  tribal 
loyalty,  and  as  there  was  the  day  of  the  feudal 
loyalty,  and  as  there  was  the  day  when  the 
nation  represented  the  supreme  synthesis,  so 
the  day  of  an  effective  organization  of  the 
world  within  which  national  life  can  nobly 
flourish  lies  ahead  of  us.  The  steps  may  be 
slow,  but  the  achievement  is  sure.” 

So  the  discussion  ended  for  that  day.  ‘‘But 
why,”  maybe  you  ask,  4 ‘did  this  club  of  fishers 
of  men  call  themselves  Merry  Fishermen?” 
Perhaps  that  will  become  evident  when  you 
know  them  better. 


II.  A  MAN  AMONG  HIS  BOOKS 


Waldo  Bryant  was  the  man  of  letters  of 
the  club.  Most  of  them  were  bookmen  in  the 
fine  sense  of  James  Russell  Lowell’s  use  of  the 
word.  But  Bryant  lived  and  moved  and  had 
his  being  in  the  world  of  books.  He  frankly  con¬ 
fessed  that  there  were  times  when  books  were 
more  real  to  him  than  people.  He  was  a  min¬ 
ister  of  a  church  intensely  proud  of  his  noble 
use  of  the  good  old  English  speech  and  the 
phrases  lighted  with  genuine  distinction  which 
were  sure  to  appear  in  any  one  of  his  sermons, 
a  church  with  a  definite  sense  of  responsibility 
for  the  intellectual  life  of  its  immediate  com¬ 
munity.  Hunter  Morrison  called  it  the  Church 
of  Sweetness  and  Light,  and  rather  scornfully 
suggested  that  it  was  completely  ignoring  the 
pressing  problems  of  social  reconstruction.  He 
and  Bryant  were  great  friends  and  when  he 
spoke  in  this  vein  Waldo  would  throw  his 
arm  over  Morrison’s  shoulder  and  remark: 
“Never  mind,  Hunter.  When  you  get  your 
reconstructed  society  ready  for  action  it  will 

be  a  thin  sort  of  a  world  unless  you  have  some 

18 


A  MAN  AMONG  HIS  BOOKS 


19 


disciples  of  Matthew  Arnold  about  to  keep 
the  love  of  disciplined  beauty  alive.” 

On  this  particular  day  Bryant  was  to  read 
a  paper  on  the  theme,  “A  Man’s  Life  With 
Books.”  The  twelve  men  were  all  present, 
and  they  sat  back  in  their  chairs  with  undis¬ 
guised  interest  as  he  began.  4 ‘Waldo  has  a 
voice  which  convinces  you  before  you  get  his 
ideas,”  Morris  MacDonald  declared.  And  as 
his  lithe,  athletic  phrases  fell  from  his  lips  you 
did  feel  that  the  singularly  supple  voice  in 
which  they  were  expressed  added  to  their 
charm  and  their  power.  “In  the  books  of 
the  world  dead  men  win  a  perpetual  resur¬ 
rection,”  he  began.  And  from  the  first  arrest¬ 
ing  sentence  every  phrase  was  shining  with 
his  own  love  of  books  and  his  own  long  and 
intimate  companionship  with  great  minds.  The 
echoing  music  of  many  a  master  was  felt  in 
his  own  sentences,  and  withal  they  rang  with 
a  fresh  and  telling  quality  which  was  his  own. 

On  the  one  hand  he  pictured  the  life  of  the 
man  who  had  never  been  welcomed  to  the 
feast  of  the  ages  spread  so  bountifully  in  the 
literature  of  the  world.  On  the  other  hand 
he  called  forth  the  men  ripe  and  rich  and  full 
of  mind  and  nobly  disciplined  in  taste  to  whom 


20  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


the  great  voices  of  all  the  long-drawn  years  are 
familiar. 

There  was  many  a  facile  bit  of  characteriza¬ 
tion,  as  when  he  described  Carlyle  as  an  apoth¬ 
ecary  who  sold  moral  bitters  to  the  nineteenth 
century.  There  were  bits  of  fine  and  tri¬ 
umphant  faith,  as  when  he  described  Browning 
as  a  man  who  knew  so  much  about  human 
nature  that  he  could  not  be  a  pessimist.  There 
were  bits  of  irony  with  their  own  cut  as  when  he 
spoke  of  Amy  Lowell  as  a  New  England  woman 
who  had  kept  the  Puritan  rude  honesty  and 
had  cast  aside  the  Puritan  moral  passion,  the 
mistress  of  brittle  phrases  with  never  a  glow 
of  moral  or  spiritual  light.  There  were  bits 
of  easy  humor,  as  in  the  paragraph  dealing  with 
Vachel  Lindsay  as  the  man  who  introduced 
rag-time  on  Parnassus. 

Through  it  all  there  was  that  sense  that 
words  are  deeds,  that  feeling  for  the  living 
character  of  writing  which  made  all  his  rela¬ 
tion  to  books  so  vivid  and  compelling.  You 
watched  the  moral  fights  of  a  man  as  he  went 
on  with  his  life  as  a  reader.  You  followed 
the  victories  and  defeats  which  his  character 
suffered  at  the  hands  of  books.  And  you  saw 
him  at  last  the  monarch  of  a  vast  domain 


A  MAN  AMONG  HIS  BOOKS 


21 


where  multitudes  of  noble  books  were  his 
eager  slaves.  The  last  paragraph  describing 
the  voices  which  speak  in  a  library  had  a 
chaste  and  almost  ethereal  beauty.  The  men 
sat  quite  still  under  the  spell  which  the  reader 
had  cast  upon  them  when  his  voice  died  away 
into  silence. 

Bowen  Tillman  recovered  first.  “Oh,  to 
have  time  for  it!”  he  ejaculated. 

“  ‘Time?  what’s  time?  Give  now  to  dogs 
and  apes.  Man  has  forever,’  ”  quoted  Hunter 
Morrison. 

“Not  at  my  church,”  flashed  back  Tillman. 

Henry  Alton  looked  over  at  the  busy  down¬ 
town  minister.  “I’m  not  sure  but  a  shower  bath 
of  reading  will  leave  a  man  ready  to  do  some 
other  things  in  half  the  time,”  he  observed. 

“The  way  to  do  a  thing  quickly  is  to  do 
something  else,”  said  Benny  Malone,  whose 
mischief  was  always  ready  to  break  out  and 
whose  bump  of  reverence  was  not  strikingly 
developed;  at  least  if  that  bump  is  supposed 
to  relate  itself  to  dignified  human  beings. 

“There’s  more  in  what  you  say  than  you 
think,”  began  Morris  MacDonald.  “Out  of 
the  mouths  of  babes  and  sucklings  ...”  inter¬ 
rupted  Malone. 


22  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


But  MacDonald  was  not  to  be  halted.  “The 
fight  for  a  fresh  mind  is  quite  as  fundamental 
as  the  fight  for  an  industrious  mind/’  he  de¬ 
clared.  “And  reading,  if  it  is  wisely  chosen, 
leaves  a  man  ready  to  think  his  way  through 
no  end  of  problems  with  a  speed  he  could  not 
have  acquired  in  any  other  way.  When  a 
man  tells  me  that  he  is  too  busy  to  read,  I 
reply  that  he  is  too  busy  not  to  read.” 

Fletcher  Hilton,  who  exercised  an  evan¬ 
gelistic  ministry  which  was  the  wonder  of  all 
who  knew  him,  now  looked  up.  “I’m  always 
ready  to  read  a  book  which  will  bring  me 
closer  to  a  man,”  he  said.  “I  am  always 
ready  to  throw  down  a  book  which  will  get 
between  me  and  people.” 

“No  book  would  get  between  you  and  the 
man  who  liked  that  book,”  said  the  irre¬ 
pressible  Malone.  “So  you  have  a  fairly  wide 
field.” 

“There  is  something  more  I  want  to  say,” 
continued  Hilton.  “I  am  afraid  of  a  certain 
citizenship  in  the  world  of  books  which  will 
make  me  less  at  home  with  the  everyday 
people  among  whom  I  must  live.  If  a  man 
gets  to  live  on  epigrams  so  that  he  can  only 
enjoy  the  society  of  people  who  are  all  the 


A  MAN  AMONG  HIS  BOOKS 


23 


while  %  saying  clever  things,  his  circle  of  human 
friends  will  get  rather  small.” 

“There’s  one  for  you,  Bryant,”  said  Morrison 
with  an  amused  touch  of  friendly  malice. 

“I  won’t  have  it,”  replied  Bryant.  “You 
can’t  possibly  be  a  less  effective  servant  of 
men  in  the  long  run  because  you  love  the 
things  they  ought  to  love  rather  than  the 
things  which  they  love  at  the  moment.” 

Monroe  Burton  had  been  silent  thus  far. 
Now  he  entered  the  lists. 

“I’m  not  afraid  of  books  pushing  me  away 
from  people,”  he  said.  “As  a  matter  of  fact, 
people  can  meet  by  means  of  books  who  would 
find  it  hard  to  understand  each  other  in  more 
personal  contact.  You  get  the  essence  of  a 
man  in  a  book  and  not  the  individual  and 
temperamental  eccentricity.” 

“And  precisely  what  you  need  is  to  see  the 
essence  in  its  human  wrappings  and  not  out¬ 
side  of  them,”  declared  Fletcher  Hilton. 

Coulton  Moore,  the  Bohemian  of  the  group, 
who  with  all  his  busy  activities  as  a  minister 
found  time  for  an  amazing  number  of  uncon¬ 
ventional  human  contacts,  who  knew  “dips” 
and  “yeggs”  and  all  sorts  of  furtive  folks, 
woke  up  to  the  idea  just  at  this  minute. 


24  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


“Books  are  either  on  the  way  to  people  or 
on  the  way  from  people.  If  they  are  on  the 
way  to  people,  it’s  a  fine  morning  and  a  good 
day  lies  ahead  on  the  open  road.  If  they  are 
on  the  way  from  people,  the  sky  is  getting 
gray  and  the  day  is  sure  to  be  cheerless  at 
last.  If  your  man  of  books  is  not  a  man  of 
men  as  well,  he  will  get  to  have  sawdust  where 
he  thought  he  had  brains.” 

“From  which  fate  you  are  forever  safe,” 
laughed  Bryant.  And  that  ended  the  dis¬ 
cussion  for  the  day. 


III.  THE  MAN  AND  THE  MACHINE 


Bowen  Tillman  had  just  finished  reading 
his  paper.  The  theme  of  the  paper  was  “The 
Age  of  Machinery.”  Tillman  began  with  the 
inventions  of  the  last  quarter  of  the  eighteenth 
century  and  moved  through  the  whole  romantic 
tale  of  the  methods  and  devices  and  machines 
which  have  changed  the  face  of  the  world  and 
the  character  of  civilization.  His  paper  had 
bristled  with  dates.  But  at  the  command  of 
his  quick  and  vivid  imagination  the  dates 
lived  and  glowed  with  color.  His  picture  of 
the  new  world  the  machine  has  made  was  as 
scientific  as  a  careful  statement  of  facts  could 
make  it,  and  was  bright  with  the  play  of  light 
from  a  mind  which  turned  hard  facts  into 
golden  poetry.  The  paper  concluded  with 
some  thoughtful  words  about  the  type  of 
mind  needed  to  carry  the  world  through  all 
the  adjustments  which  the  new  application  of 
power  had  made  necessary.  “The  future  be¬ 
longs  to  the  great  organizing  engineer,”  Tillman 
had  declared,  and  then  he  had  portrayed  the 
services  of  this  master  of  men  and  things,  of 

25 


26  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


manufacturing  and  transportation  and  of  the 
problems  of  salesmanship. 

There  was  silence  for  a  moment  when  the 
reading  of  the  paper  had  concluded.  It  was 
evident  that  every  one  of  the  twelve  merry 
fishermen  was  deeply  impressed.  Then  Benny 
Malone  broke  out! 

“Give  me  a  job  as  your  private  secretary, 
Mr.  Super-engineer.  I’d  like  to  hitch  my 
wagon  to  your  sort  of  star.” 

Waldo  Bryant  spoke  up  moodily : 

“That’s  just  the  temper  of  the  age,”  he  said. 
“We  never  stop  to  think  of  all  the  havoc 
wrought  by  this  iconoclastic  age  of  ugly  ma¬ 
chines.  We  never  think  of  all  the  beauty 
which  has  been  destroyed.  We  never  think  of 
all  the  mental  life  which  has  been  impover¬ 
ished.  We  never — ” 

“0,  come  now,”  called  Coulton  Moore,  “you 
are  singing  a  dirge  too  soon.  Of  course  some 
of  the  old  romance  is  gone,  and  it  is  gone 
forever.  But  think  of  the  new  romance. 
Think  of  all  the  poems  hidden  in  the  whirring 
wheels  and  moving  belts  of  great  machines. 
There  is  to  be  a  new  humanism  based  upon 
modern  inventions.  It  will  produce  a  new  sort 
of  man  of  letters.  Sometimes  Kipling  gives  you 


THE  MAN  AND  THE  MACHINE  27 


a  hint  of  what  it  will  be  like.  You  can’t  turn 
back  the  clock,  Bryant.  You’d  better  turn  for¬ 
ward  your  mind  instead.  Here’s  a  train  leav¬ 
ing  Fifth-Century  Athens  for  Twentieth- Cen¬ 
tury  America.  Better  come  and  get  on  board.” 

Monroe  Burton  scarcely  waited  for  Moore 
to  complete  his  last  sentence,  “You  capitulate 
too  soon,”  he  said.  “Let’s  take  time  to  exam¬ 
ine  the  situation.  It  isn’t  the  loss  of  poetry 
I  am  thinking  so  much  about.  It’s  the  loss  of 
life.  I  don’t  object  to  men  using  machines. 
I  do  object  to  having  a  man  become  a  machine. 
It’s  all  right  to  use  a  typewriter.  The  trouble 
is  that  so  many  people  have  become  human 
typewriters.  We  are  living  in  an  age  of  de¬ 
pleted  personality.  And  machines  have  done 
it.  Our  taste  as  well  as  our  productive  power 
is  lowered  until  we  actually  suppose  that  Amy 
Lowell  can  write  poetry.  We  are  stamping 
real  initiative  and  creative  energy  out  of 
modern  life.  We  are  becoming  the  victims  of 
our  inventions.  We  have  constructed  a 
Frankenstein  which  seems  in  fair  way  to 
destroy  our  civilization.” 

“Jeremiah,  I  hail  thee,”  put  in  Benny 
Malone.  “Just  what  chapter  of  the  Lamenta¬ 
tions  is  this?” 


28  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


Henry  Alton  was  smiling  a  little.  Now  he 
spoke : 

4 ‘It  isn’t  really  as  bad  as  that,  Burton,” 
he  said.  “Every  invention  is  the  expression 
of  an  amazing  amount  of  really  creative  mental 
power.  And  the  extra  hours  for  the  workers 
which  these  inventions  have  already  made 
possible  give  an  opportunity  for  an  ampler 
mental  life  and  a  variety  of  human  experience 
which  were  one  day  impossible.  The  problem 
of  the  age  of  machinery  is  the  new  leisure 
which  has  come  to  the  groups  we  used  to  de¬ 
scribe  as  the  working  classes.  If  this  new 
leisure  is  used  wisely,  we  can  produce  a  genera¬ 
tion  of  superbly  gifted  and  superbly  trained 
men  and  women  to  carry  on  the  big  adventure 
of  life.” 

Hunter  Morrison  spoke  up  wrathfully: 

“You  ought  to  know  better,  Henry  Alton,” 
he  said.  4 'You  do  know  as  well  as  I  that  we 
are  living  upon  a  crater  of  industrial  unrest. 
The  age  of  machinery  has  produced  a  race  of 
slaves.  And  little  enough  real  difference  has 
been  made  by  the  slight  concessions  in  hours 
and  wages.  The  only  hope  is  in  a  real  and 
definite  reconstruction  of  the  system  under 
which  we  live.  A  system  conceived  and  bom 


THE  MAN  AND  THE  MACHINE  29 


in  agricultural  life  cannot  live  and  flourish  in 
an  industrial  age  which  receives  the  very  form 
of  its  activity  from  mechanical  inventions.” 

Tom  Tabor  was  on  his  feet  at  that. 

“All  this  talk  of  reconstruction  makes  me 
unutterably  weary,”  he  said.  “As  if  we  had 
not  been  doing  just  that  for  half  a  century 
and  more.  We  have  worn  some  of  our  watch¬ 
words  threadbare.  Now  we  need  to  get  down 
to  realities.  The  progress  of  the  nineteenth 
century  in  social  and  industrial  legislation  has 
been  an  amazing  thing.  We  do  not  need  a 
new  system.  We  do  need  more  poise.  Every 
year  a  fuller  life  comes  within  the  reach  of  all 
men  of  all  classes.  Tillman  is  right.  We  need 
bigger  engineers.  But  it  is  for  the  purpose  of 
completing  a  job  partly  finished,  and  not  for 
the  purpose  of  beginning  all  over  again.” 

“The  butterfly  above  the  road 
Preaches  contentment  to  the  toad,” 

quoted  Hunter  Morrison,  a  little  maliciously. 

Just  here  Fletcher  Hilton  began  to  speak: 

“Curiously  enough,  none  of  you  have  said 
anything  about  the  effect  of  all  this  on  reli¬ 
gion,”  he  declared.  “To  me  as  a  preacher  it 
seems  that  the  outstanding  effect  of  the  age 


30  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


of  machinery  has  been  to  make  the  work  of 
evangelism  more  difficult.  Life  seems  to  be 
caught  up  in  mysterious  and  mechanical  rela¬ 
tionships.  It  is  harder  in  all  these  complex 
organizations  to  arouse  a  deep  and  powerful 
sense  of  personal  responsibility.  Men  are  will¬ 
ing  to  repent  of  the  sins  of  the  machine.  They 
are  not  willing  to  admit  that  they  are  per¬ 
sonally  responsible  for  the  wrong  things  done 
by  the  wffieels  and  belts.” 

Morris  MacDonald  had  turned  about  as 
Hilton  began  speaking.  Now  he  entered  the 
discussion  with  a  little  note  of  eagerness  in 
his  voice:  “What  an  indictment  and  what 
a  tribute!”  he  began.  “There  is  the  attack 
of  humanism.  There  is  the  attack  of  social 
passion.  There  is  the  attack  of  ethics.  There 
is  the  attack  of  religion.  The  age  of  machin¬ 
ery  is  really  having  a  hard  time.  But  really 
it  is  not  the  fault  of  the  machines.  They  are 
only  inanimate  slaves.  And  life  could  be  richer 
for  all  of  us  because  of  their  activities.  The 
age  of  machinery  is  actually  an  age  of  instru¬ 
ments  we  have  not  yet  mastered.  It  is  an  age 
of  servants  we  have  not  yet  completely  disci¬ 
plined.  The  supreme  challenge  which  has 
come  to  humanity  up  to  this  day  is  just  the 


THE  MAN  AND  THE  MACHINE  31 


opportunity  to  bend  machinery  to  the  higher 
purposes  of  life.” 

Morris  MacDonald  paused  a  moment  and  a 
twinkle  came  into  his  eye.  “There  is  a  pas¬ 
sage  in  the  book  of  Ezekiel  which  I  commend 
to  your  serious  attention,”  he  said.  “It  is 
this:  ‘The  spirit  of  the  living  creature  was  in 
the  wheels.’  When  machinery  is  dominated  by 
personality  the  world  is  safe.” 

“But — ”  said  Hunter  Morrison. 

“However — ”  exclaimed  Bowen  Tillman. 

“And  yet — ”  cried  Waldo  Bryant. 

And  just  at  that  moment  luncheon  was 
announced. 


IV.  PREACHING  AND  PAGANISM 


James  Clayton  was  the  rural  member  of 
the  club.  He  was  immensely  proud  that  he 
could  call  himself  a  country  minister.  He  was 
heartily  a  part  of  the  life  about  him.  You 
could  find  volumes  of  discussion  of  scientific 
agriculture  on  his  shelves.  He  was  a  part  of 
the  larger  life  of  the  world.  You  could  often 
find  him  poring  over  some  book  which  set 
about  the  unraveling  of  a  knotting  international 
problem.  He  was  a  part  of  the  vast  unfolding 
life  of  the  church.  No  volumes  in  his  well- 
packed  cases  showed  more  evidence  of  fre¬ 
quent  perusal  than  those  which  told  the  story 
of  the  thought  of  the  church,  the  long  tale 
of  its  intellectual  struggles.  Somehow  he 
brought  things  together  in  his  own  life  and  in 
his  ministry  which  men  often  think  about  in 
the  terms  of  a  subtle  antagonism.  Busy  as  he 
was  about  his  wide-lying  parish,  he  had  a  keen 
scent  for  the  significant  new  book.  You  were 
rather  likely  to  find  that  book  upon  his  study 
table. 

The  Twelve  Merry  Fishermen  knew  the  ways 

32 


PREACHING  AND  PAGANISM  33 


and  the  abilities  of  Clayton  very  well,  and  it 
was  with  a  little  touch  of  hearty  expectancy 
that  they  gathered  in  the  hotel  on  the  day 
when  he  was  to  read  the  paper.  He  took  his 
manuscript  from  his  pocket,  and  laid  beside 
it  a  small  but  closely  printed  volume.  “I  am 
going  to  discuss  Professor  Albert  Parker  Fitch’s 
Yale  Lectures,  ‘Preaching  and  Paganism,'  ”  he 
began.  The  men  leaned  back  in  their  chairs 
to  listen. 

Clayton  was  not  a  particularly  attractive 
reader.  He  had  his  own  personal  tricks  of 
emphasis.  And  he  had  an  entirely  individual 
set  of  modulations  of  tone.  But  withal  he 
held  your  attention,  and  usually  you  forgot  the 
reader  in  listening  to  his  thoughts  before  he 
had  been  reading  very  long.  On  this  particular 
day  he  gave  a  few  graphic  touches  to  placing 
the  mental  character  of  Professor  Fitch  before 
the  members  of  the  club.  You  knew  that  the 
man  he  was  discussing  was  a  cosmopolitan 
man  of  letters  with  a  gift  for  phrases  which 
cut  their  way  to  the  heart  of  a  subject  like  a 
sharp  knife.  You  felt  the  resilience  of  the  mind 
beginning  the  Yale  lectures  with  the  observa¬ 
tion  that  it  was  necessary  in  that  course  not 
merely  to  hitch  one’s  wagon  to  a  star  but  to 


34  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


a  whole  constellation.  You  sensed  the  quality 
of  close  and  adequate  technical  scholarship 
which  gave  precision  as  well  as  depth  to  Pro¬ 
fessor  Fitch’s  work.  Then  Clayton  gave  him¬ 
self  to  an  interpretation  of  the  lectures  them¬ 
selves.  You  found  that  you  were  in  the  pres¬ 
ence  of  a  busy  modern  mind  acquainted  with 
all  the  contemporary  watchwords,  alive  with 
social  passion,  warmly  sympathetic  with  every 
real  thing  in  contemporary  life,  and  at  heart 
desperately  lonely  for  one  thing,  terribly  hungry 
for  authentic  contact  with  the  living  God. 
This  loneliness  you  felt  had  not  been  in  vain. 
This  hunger  had  not  left  the  spirit  of  the  man 
empty.  In  deep  and  searching  analysis  of  his 
own  soul  and  of  the  period  in  which  he  lived, 
he  had  discovered  the  inadequacy  of  human¬ 
ism,  and  the  hot  power  of  that  invading  pagan¬ 
ism  which,  wearing  many  a  garment,  peers 
in  upon  us  at  every  turn  of  the  road.  He  had 
dared  to  be  honest  with  the  moral  problems. 
He  had  scorned  evasion  and  subterfuge.  And 
a  new  sense  of  God,  a  new  apprehension  of 
religion,  a  new  and  startlingly  vital  under¬ 
standing  of  redemption  had  come  to  him  out 
of  all  this.  The  passion  and  the  enthusiasm  of 
it  all  was  poured  forth  in  the  Yale  lectures  on 


PREACHING  AND  PAGANISM 


35 


preaching.  Some  of  the  sentences  which  Clay¬ 
ton  quoted  were  conclusive  enough  of  the  sharp 
definiteness  of  the  analysis  of  Professor  Fitch, 
and  of  the  ethical  energy  of  his  message. 

“Humanism  makes  an  inhuman  demand  upon 
the  will.”  “The  primitive  in  man  is  a  beast 
whom  it  is  hard  to  chain,  nor  does  humanism, 
with  its  semiscientific,  semisentimental  lauda¬ 
tion  of  all  natural  values,  produce  that  exact¬ 
ing  mood  of  inward  scrutiny  in  which  self- 
control  has  most  chance  of  succeeding.”  “It 
would  appear  to  be  generally  true  that  society 
at  this  moment  is  not  chiefly  concerned  with 
either  love  or  justice,  renunciation  or  discipline, 
nor  with  the  supplanting  of  the  old  order,  but 
with  perpetuating  the  naturalistic  principle  by 
means  of  a  partial  redivision  of  the  spoils,  a 
series  of  compromises,  designed  to  make  it 
more  tolerable  for  one  class  of  its  former  vic¬ 
tims.”  “The  deepest  cause  of  human  misery  is 
not  inheritance,  is  not  environment,  is  not 
ignorance,  is  not  incompleteness:  it  is  the  in¬ 
formed  but  perverse  human  will.”  “You  are 
something  more  than  physical  hunger  and 
reproductive  instinct.”  “You  do  not  make  a 
man  moral  by  enlightening  him.”  “No  man 
was  ever  yet  able  to  preach  the  living  God 


36  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


until  he  understood  that  the  central  need  in 
human  life  is  to  reconcile  the  individual  con¬ 
science  to  itself,  compose  the  anarchy  of  the 
spiritual  life.  Men  want  to  be  happy  and  be 
fed;  but  men  must  have  inward  peace.”  The 
paper  concluded  with  a  glowing  account  of 
the  vital  and  freshly  phrased  expression  of  the 
eternal  meaning  of  the  moral  and  spiritual 
battle  and  the  Christian  peace  as  these  are 
set  forth  by  Professor  Fitch. 

Clayton  had  hardly  finished  when  Hunter 
Morrison  spoke: 

“The  words  are  the  words  of  modernity,  but 
the  spirit  comes  out  of  the  Middle  Ages.  It’s 
just  another  attempt  to  lead  us  to  surrender 
the  gains  of  the  world  which  has  lived  since 
the  days  of  Petrarch.” 

Baldwin  Paxton  followed  in  his  slow  and 
careful  way. 

“It  seems  to  me  that  Professor  Fitch  under¬ 
estimates  the  contribution  of  modern  science 
to  the  solution  of  the  moral  and  the  religious 
problem.  And  with  all  his  scholarship  there  is 
a  subtle  appeal  to  the  emotions  which  has  its 
own  elements  of  grave  danger.” 

Monroe  Burton  had  a  twinkle  in  his  eye: 

“Professor  Fitch  is  really  a  belated  Wesley 


PREACHING  AND  PAGANISM  37 


trying  to  preach  a  sermon  with  the  vocabulary 
of  a  New-England  intellectual,”  he  said. 

This  was  too  much  for  Fletcher  Hilton: 

“Just  go  a  little  farther,  Burton,”  he  said. 
“You  might  add  that  he  is  an  Augustine  and  a 
Luther  and  a  Paul.  In  other  words,  you  might 
say  that  being  a  professor  of  the  history  of 
religion  has  given  him  a  sense  of  historic  con¬ 
tinuity.  He  is  trying  to  let  the  Christian  ages 
speak  in  the  voice  of  the  age.” 

Coulton  Moore  now  spoke  up: 

“I’m  a  bit  puzzled  by  the  contrast  between 
Professor  Fitch’s  little  brochure,  Can  the  Church 
Survive  in  the  Changing  Order?  and  his  Yale 
lectures.  One  seemed  the  very  voice  of  every¬ 
thing  real  and  restless  in  the  life  of  to-day. 
The  other  seems  the  utterance  of  a  modern 
man  who  has  just  gone  with  Moses  to  the 
Mount  of  the  Law  and  has  been  swiftly  carried 
to  the  Mount  of  Transfiguration  and  then  has 
come  down  to  bend  the  contemporary  vernacu¬ 
lar  to  the  meaning  of  what  he  has  seen  and  felt.” 

Waldo  Bryant  turned  on  Moore  with  this 
sentence: 

“One  volume  is  diagnosis.  The  other  is 
prescription.  And  the  prescription  had  not 
been  discovered  when  the  diagnosis  was  made.” 


38  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


Bowen  Tillman  moved  a  little  eagerly: 

“The  thing  which  gripped  me  about  ‘Preach¬ 
ing  and  Paganism’  was  this,”  he  said.  “I  have 
been  feeling  for  a  hundred  days  that  my  preach¬ 
ing  was  getting  thin.  Professor  Fitch  put  his 
hand  on  the  cause.  He  did  better.  He  showed 
me  the  way  out  of  my  trouble.  I  have  not 
been  calling  to  the  deeps  in  human  life.  He 
made  me  resolve  to  besiege  the  farthest  citadel 
in  a  man’s  soul.  I  feel  as  if  he  had  put  iron 
into  my  blood.” 

Tom  Tabor  was  sitting  beside  Tillman.  Now 
he  spoke: 

“Clayton  said  nothing  about  Professor 
Fitch’s  uplifting  worship  as  over  against  preach¬ 
ing.  I  like  to  think  of  a  new  appreciation  of 
worship.  But  I  am  clear  that  Professor  Fitch 
does  not  think  highly  enough  of  preaching.” 

“These  things  ought  ye  to  have  done  and 
not  to  have  left  the  others  undone,”  inter¬ 
rupted  Benny  Malone. 

Morris  MacDonald  was  seated  at  the  end  of 
the  table.  He  moved  a  little.  Everyone  felt 
that  his  word  would  close  the  discussion  of 
the  day. 

“There  are  things  in  this  book  I  do  not 
believe,”  he  said.  “There  are  trails  of  thought 


PREACHING  AND  PAGANISM  39 


I  cannot  follow.  I  wish  that  Professor  Fitch 
were  a  little  less  cavalier  at  times  with  things 
which  still  glow  with  wonder  and  with  power 
to  multitudes  of  Christians.  But  for  all  that, 
I  want  to  say  that  no  book  about  religion  has 
so  stirred  me  for  a  dozen  years.  This  little 
volume  rises  right  above  the  other  things 
which  are  being  written  in  America.  Once 
again  we  have  a  book  which  sounds  the  au¬ 
thentic  note  of  religion  as  a  morally  trans¬ 
forming  contact  with  the  life  of  the  eternal.  I 
would  put  it  on  the  study  of  every  preacher 
in  the  United  States.”  He  paused  a  moment. 
Then  he  added,  “In  this  book  at  last  Greece 
pays  tribute  to  Jerusalem.” 


V.  THE  JEW  AND  CIVILIZATION 


Hunter  Morrison  could  always  be  trusted 
to  choose  a  theme  which  was  alive  in  the  con¬ 
temporary  mind. 

“I  know  his  subject.  It  is  ‘The  Age  of  Steel 
and  the  Age  of  Men/  ”  declared  Benny  Malone, 
as  the  twelve  took  their  places  around  the 
table. 

Morrison  looked  up  with  some  amusement  in 
his  eyes. 

“Guess  again,  Benny,”  he  said. 

“Then  it’s  ‘The  Closed  Mind  and  the  Open 
Shop/  ”  ventured  Malone. 

“Wrong  once  more,”  said  Morrison. 

By  this  time  all  the  members  were  settled 
comfortably  in  their  chairs.  Hunter  Morrison 
took  his  paper  from  his  pocket. 

“My  subject,”  he  announced,  “is  ‘The  Jew 
and  the  Safety  of  the  World/  ” 

More  than  one  member  of  the  club  made  a 
little  gesture  of  quickened  interest.  Morrison 
had  an  unusual  knowledge  of  significant  radi¬ 
cal  literature.  He  maintained  a  mental  life  of 
really  cosmopolitan  interest.  And  he  could  be 

40 


THE  JEW  AND  CIVILIZATION  41 


trusted  to  deal  with  this  problem  in  a  large 
and  critical  and  fearless  way.  He  began  with 
a  discussion  of  the  articles  published  in  the 
London  Morning  Post  under  the  title,  “The 
Cause  of  the  World  Unrest.”  He  referred  to 
such  expressions  of  opinion  as  you  find  in  one 
cutting  chapter  of  Gilbert  Chesterton’s  book. 
The  New  Jerusalem .  He  noted  some  of  the 
vigorous  American  expressions  of  Anti-Semitic 
feeling.  He  called  attention  to  the  little  book 
of  Lucien  Wolf,  The  Myth  of  the  Jewish  Menace 
in  World  Affairs ,  and  to  John  Spargo’s  effective 
discussion,  The  Jew  and  American  Ideals. 
Then  he  turned  to  a  quick  survey  of  the  long 
story  of  the  Jew.  The  men  about  the  table 
felt  once  more  the  power  of  that  high,  pure 
faith  which  rose  in  the  midst  of  the  unabashed 
animalism  of  Semitic  religion.  They  sensed  the 
life  which  lay  back  of  the  noblest  distinctions 
of  Hebrew  law  and  the  loftiest  moral  and 
spiritual  heights  of  Hebrew  prophecy.  They 
stopped  to  remember  that  when  Jesus  spoke 
his  words  of  matchless  insight  and  power  he 
utilized  a  mind  trained  in  Jewish  traditions  and 
rich  with  Jewish  ethical  and  spiritual  idealism. 
“Only  Israel  furnished  a  possible  background 
for  the  teachings  of  Jesus,”  declared  Morrison. 


42  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


Then  the  long  story  of  Jewish  life  in  many 
ages  and  in  many  lands  was  touched  upon. 
You  saw  the  Jew  become  a  cosmopolitan  who 
appropriated  the  Greek  culture  in  Alexandria. 
You  watched  the  flowering  of  the  Jewish  mind 
in  the  golden  age  in  Spain.  And  you  looked 
upon  terrible  deeds  of  persecution  in  many  a 
country.  You  watched  the  kings  of  the  Middle 
Ages  very  ready  to  repent  of  their  tolerance 
when  they  owed  debts  to  wealthy  Jews.  Y7ou 
watched  the  bigotry  of  the  world  fasten  upon 
a  tortured  race.  Coming  to  Russia,  you  saw 
men  of  the  old  regime  alertly  watching.  When 
the  menace  of  revolution  was  near,  you  saw 
once  and  again  the  attempt  to  make  people 
forget  their  desire  for  revolution  in  their  con¬ 
centration  upon  hatred  of  the  Jew.  And  when, 
after  massacre  and  ruthless  destruction,  this 
sort  of  attempt  failed,  you  saw  skillful  and 
remorseless  men  turning  the  hatred  of  the 
Jew  into  a  world-wide  propaganda  to  further 
purposes  of  their  own.  There  was  an  ample 
discussion  of  the  Protocols  of  the  Wise  Men  of 
Zion.  The  contradictory  accounts  published 
with  varied  editions  were  carefully  analyzed. 
The  absolute  absence  of  anything  like  real 
proof  of  their  allegations  was  made  plain. 


THE  JEW  AND  CIVILIZATION  43 


“No  jury  would  convict  upon  such  evidence,’’ 
declared  Morrison.  The  assertion  that  “at  the 
close  of  a  series  of  secret  meetings  of  influential 
leaders  of  the  conspiracy,  held  under  Masonic 
auspices,  a  woman  stole  from  one  of  the  most 
influential  and  highly  initiated  leaders  of  Free¬ 
masonry”  the  documents  revealing  the  plot 
was  quoted,  and  the  fashion  in  which  it  was 
contradicted  was  emphasized.  A  few  telling 
words  were  given  to  the  relation  between  Jews 
and  Bolshevism.  It  was  pointed  out  that 
where  masses  of  Jews  lived  Bolshevism  was 
less  easily  successful  in  Russia.  And  the  vigor 
of  Anti-Bolshevistic  leadership  on  the  part  of 
the  Jews  was  shown.  The  sufferings  of  the  Jews 
under  the  Bolshevist  regime  were  made  clear. 
In  a  clever  aside  Morrison  quoted  from  Spargo 
the  account  of  the  absurd  theory  that  the 
English  are  a  part  of  the  Jewish  race  and  that 
the  British  government  is  the  principal  direct¬ 
ing  power  of  the  Jewish  conspiracy,  and  the 
fact  that  this  theory,  carefully  omitted  from 
every  English  translation,  was  reproduced  in 
the  1905  Russian  edition  of  the  work  of  Nilus, 
to  whom  we  are  supposed  to  owe  all  our  knowl¬ 
edge  of  the  Protocols.  The  paper  then  turned 
to  a  tribute  to  some  of  the  great  Jewish  thinkers 


44  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


like  Spinoza  in  the  seventeenth  century  and 
Bergson  in  our  own.  It  closed  with  a  plea  for 
that  fair  play  upon  which  our  very  institu¬ 
tions  rest.  “If  a  Jew  breaks  a  law,  let  him  be 
punished  like  any  other  man,”  said  Morrison. 
“But  do  not  suspect  him  because  he  is  a  Jew. 
Do  not  hate  him  because  he  is  a  Jew.  And 
do  not  let  loose  upon  him  the  bitterness  of  that 
race  hatred  which  has  pursued  him  with  such 
beastly  fury  almost  all  over  the  world.”  The 
last  word  of  the  paper  was  a  picture  of  America 
as  a  land  where  men  of  every  race  and  every 
religious  belief  may  confidently  expect  to  find 
justice  and,  even  more,  an  outreach  of  that 
understanding  sympathy  which  is  brother¬ 
hood  and  makes  for  peace. 

Bowen  Tillman  began  the  discussion.  “Good 
work,  my  friend,”  he  said.  “Just  the  same,  I 
wish  rich  Jews  had  had  a  little  less  to  do  with 
the  corrupting  aspects  of  the  moving-picture 
business.” 

“I’m  not  defending  all  Jews,”  Morrison 
flashed  back.  “I  am  just  contending  that 
there  is  no  Jewish  conspiracy  and  that  the 

race  is  still  the  source  of  rich  and  noble  ideal- 

•  >> 
ism. 

Waldo  Bryant  spoke  next. 


THE  JEW  AND  CIVILIZATION  45 


“You  commend  the  race  to  my  judgment. 
But  you  will  never  commend  some  members 
of  the  race  to  my  taste,”  he  said. 

“All  of  which  might  be  said  of  any  race,” 
said  Tom  Tabor.  “And  add  to  that  the  ages 
of  persecution.  You  must  grow  a  race  in  a 
garden  of  flowers  if  delicacy  is  the  thing  you 
want  most.  If  a  race  survives  what  would 
annihilate  most  races,  you  must  expect  it  to 
have  strength  rather  than  grace.  For  all  that, 
you  can  find  the  delicacy  and  the  grace  too 
in  many  a  noble  member  of  this  racial  group.” 

Baldwin  Paxton  was  waiting  to  get  in  a  word. 

“We  must  never  forget,”  he  said,  “that  we 
ought  to  be  more  careful  to  be  just  if  there 
are  racial  barriers.  And  we  should  be  doubly 
sure  of  our  evidence  if  we  even  suspect  that 
we  feel  a  touch  of  personal  prejudice.” 

Coulton  Moore  said  the  last  word  of  the  day. 
“I’ve  watched  a  good  deal  of  practical  social 
ministry  in  my  time,”  he  said.  “The  Jewish 
welfare  work  is  a  credit  to  our  cities,  and  the 
Jews  know  how  to  sympathize  and  how  to 
give.  They  knew  how  to  die  too,  in  the  name 
of  liberty  of  the  world.  And  as  Disraeli  gave 
England  brilliant  service  and  helped  it  to  see 
its  own  great  destiny,  so  Jews  have  been  ready 


46  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


to  love  the  land  they  made  their  own.  They 
have  their  place  in  America.  And  we  are  only 
true  to  ourselves  when  we  think  of  them  as 
fellow  Americans  and  not  as  members  of  a 
particular  race.” 


VI.  THE  FURTIVE  PEOPLE 


The  Club  was  having  its  last  meeting  be¬ 
fore  the  summer  vacation  period.  It  was  a 
very  old-fashioned  outdoor  meeting.  Leaving 
automobiles  in  the  various  garages  at  home 
the  men  had  taken  a  trolley  car,  riding  about 
twelve  miles  out  from  the  city.  Then  they 
took  a  road  which  wound  among  the  hills  and 
finally  pulled  up  at  a  rendezvous  on  the  edge 
of  a  high  bit  of  forest  country.  There  was  a 
wonderful  view  of  hill  and  valley  and  river 
and  the  men  flung  themselves  on  the  grass 
to  drink  it  all  in.  Each  member  of  the  club 
had  carried  his  own  neatly  packed  box  of 
provisions  for  the  evening  meal  which  would 
come  a  little  later.  For  a  time  they  were 
content  to  look  upon  the  hills  and  the  trees 
and  all  the  fresh  beauty  of  early  summer  and 
to  let  their  eyes  wander  to  the  city  which  lay 
in  the  valley,  seeming  this  bright  and  clear 
afternoon  very  distant  and  very  still. 

Coulton  Moore  was  to  read  the  paper  of 
the  day.  He  looked  a  bit  more  the  Bohemian 

than  usual  with  his  dark,  eager  face,  his  deep, 

47 


48  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


flashing  eyes  and  his  slouch  hat  which  he  wore 
with  a  certain  careless  grace.  The  men  had 
all  found  comfortable  positions,  and  it  was  a 
good  and  hearty  group  upon  which  Coulton 
Moore  looked  as  he  removed  his  hat,  took 
his  paper  from  his  inside  coat  pocket  and  pre¬ 
pared  to  read. 

“My  subject,”  he  began  in  a  curious  half 
formal  way  he  had  which  was  in  sharp  con¬ 
trast  with  his  temperament  as  his  friends 
came  to  know  it.  “My  subject  is  ‘The  Chil¬ 
dren  of  Ishmael  in  America.’  ” 

Waldo  Bryant  gave  a  little  gesture  of  satis¬ 
faction  followed  by  a  half-audible  ejaculation. 
The  theme  suited  the  place  and  the  time  and 
he  settled  back  to  listen  to  a  man  with  a  touch 
of  wildness  in  his  own  blood  as  he  described 
the  life  and  habits  of  the  underworld.  Bryant 
declared  sometimes  that  Moore  was  like  Victor 
Hugo’s  character  Javert,  who  had  to  be  either 
a  criminal  or  a  detective,  only  in  Moore’s  case 
the  alternatives  were  an  outlaw  against  so¬ 
ciety  or  a  preacher  who  spent  much  of  his 
time  trying  to  save  outlaws  to  civilization  and 
to  Christianity.  But  by  this  time  Moore  was 
reading. 

He  began  by  telling  how  years  before  he 


THE  FURTIVE  PEOPLE 


49 


had  read  Donald  Lowrie’s  My  Life  in  Prison , 
and  of  how  it  had  roused  his  mind  to  the 
experience  of  those  who  spent  years  in  the 
great  American  prisons.  He  told  of  his  read¬ 
ing  of  the  writings  of  Thomas  Mott  Osborne 
and  of  the  intimate  way  in  which  he  had  fol¬ 
lowed  the  work  of  that  Knight  Errant  for  the 
Outcasts  as  it  was  carried  on  at  Sing  Sing. 
He  spoke  of  Wellington  Scott’s  Seventeen  Years 
in  the  Underworld  with  its  illuminating  account 
of  the  processes  by  which  an  American  boy 
can  become  a  criminal  and  its  convincing 
narrative  regarding  prison  conditions  as  the 
author  found  them.  Then  he  plunged  into 
his  own  experiences  with  the  furtive  people. 
From  this  moment  his  hearers  listened  with 
rapt  and  eager  interest.  Moore  had  the  natural 
gift  of  a  story-teller,  and  as  he  moved  from 
one  big  American  city  to  another  following  the 
trail  of  his  adventurous  endeavors  to  win  the 
men  of  the  underworld  his  auditors  felt  that 
they  were  indeed  entering  a  new  world.  He 
described  many  a  visit  to  many  a  prison  from 
Sing  Sing  on  the  East  to  San  Quentin  on  the 
West,  and  as  you  followed  him  in  and  out  of 
these  great  fortresses  there  was  always  the 
human  touch,  always  the  revealing  insight. 


50  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


With  instinctive  sympathy  he  seemed  to  dis¬ 
cover  the  point  of  view  of  the  man  who  has 
become  the  foe  of  organized  society.  You 
felt  as  if  you  were  looking  at  the  criminal 
from  within  and  not  from  without.  Or,  as 
Benny  Malone  put  it  afterward,  you  felt  as 
if  you  had  become  the  criminal.  There  was 
an  honest  consideration  of  the  bitter  crimes 
and  the  loathsome  vices  which  infest  the  under¬ 
world.  But  there  was  also  the  clearest  sort 
of  insistence  that  many  a  criminal  fights  a 
great  moral  fight  to  keep  free  from  the  darker 
things  and  there  was  an  account  of  the  code 
of  morals  of  the  crook  which  had  a  whim¬ 
sical  understanding  of  the  type  the  reader  was 
describing.  The  hours  of  torturing  conscious¬ 
ness  of  what  the  criminal  life  means  and  the 
wistful  loneliness  hidden  in  the  heart  of  many 
a  crook  were  set  forth  with  an  insight  which 
carried  conviction.  And  the  capacity  for  good 
hidden  away  in  the  cast-off  lives  of  the  children 
of  Ishmael  was  described  with  a  noble  and 
passionate  energy.  Last  of  all,  there  were 
just  a  few  stories  of  men  outside  the  pale  whom 
Moore  had  seen  fight  the  good  fight  and  win 
at  last,  leaving  the  furtive  ways  of  the  furtive 
people  for  the  ways  of  integrity  and  good  will. 


THE  FURTIVE  PEOPLE 


51 


The  men  sat  quiet  a  little  while  in  the  late 
afternoon.  Jamds  Clayton  was  gathering  sticks 
and  bits  of  wood  together.  Soon  he  had 
lighted  a  fire  and  in  a  few  moments  there  was 
the  aroma  of  coffee  and  other  indications  that 
an  outdoor  supper  was  being  prepared. 

Baldwin  Paxton  was  the  first  to  speak: 

“I  confess  that  I  am  afraid  of  that  sort  of 
thing,5’  he  said.  “It’s  a  bit  too  much  like 
taking  down  the  walls.  It  has  taken  centuries 
to  achieve  an  orderly  world  and  I  can’t  see 
but  the  man  who  refuses  to  be  a  part  of  it 
must  pay  the  penalty.  Thomas  Mott  Osborne 
won  the  friendship  of  criminals.  I  am  not  so 
sure  that  he  won  them  to  a  permanent  refor¬ 
mation.” 

“Would  you  say  the  same  thing  of  Maude 
Ballington  Booth?”  inquired  Morris  Mac¬ 
Donald. 

“Of  course  there’s  a  big  difference,”  ad¬ 
mitted  Paxton.  “And  I’ve  no  doubt  she  has 
done  much  good.  But  when  I  hear  her  speak 
I  feel  once  and  again  as  if  her  heart  is  nearer 
to  the  prisoner  than  to  society.” 

“Thank  God,”  said  Hunter  Morrison,  fer¬ 
vently. 

Bowen  Tillman  was  holding  a  tiny  bit  of 


52  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


bacon  near  a  bright  bit  of  blaze.  He  turned 
to  enter  the  conversation  with  results  not  at 
all  conducive  to  the  attractiveness  of  the 
bacon  for  the  palate.  But  he  went  on  undis¬ 
turbed. 

“I  really  do  believe  we  have  been  thinking 
with  too  much  sentimentality  of  the  criminal 
class.”  He  smiled  a  little  ruefully.  “I  thought 
I  was  a  fairly  good  judge  of  human  nature. 
But  only  last  month  I  lost  twenty-five  dollars 
because  I  believed  the  story  of  a  plausible 
confidence  man.  I  am  beginning  to  think 
that  a  little  sternness  is  the  best  kindness.” 

Monroe  Burton  blazed  into  the  discussion 
just  at  this  moment  with  a  good  deal  of  in¬ 
tensity. 

“I  wonder  if  some  of  you  men  have  ever 
been  on  a  commission  which  investigated  con¬ 
ditions  in  one  of  the  old  type  of  prisons.  I 
had  that  experience  and  I  haven’t  talked  about 
sentimental  treatment  of  criminals  since.  If  I 
had  to  go  through  what  some  of  these  poor 
chaps  endured,  I  would  be  very  much  afraid 
of  the  consequences.  Many  a  prison  has  taken 
a  man  who  had  made  a  bad  mistake  and  has 
turned  him  into  a  brute.  And  it’s  a  clear 
waste  of  the  most  valuable  raw  material  in 


THE  FURTIVE  PEOPLE 


53 


the  world.  Of  course  a  man  must  keep  his 
head.  But  you  needn’t  fear  that  you’ll  corrupt 
a  criminal  if  you  show  him  that  you  have  a 
human  heart.”  James  Clayton  now  found 
time  to  enter  the  lists,  though  it  was  with  a 
very  gentle  word. 

“There  are  little  homes  in  the  country  from 
which  many  of  them  come,”  he  said.  “One 
of  my  boys  came  back  last  winter.  He  was 
all  broken  and  full  of  despair.  Life  had  been 
too  much  for  him.  And  he  wore  his  terrible 
memories  of  prison  like  a  uniform  in  his  haggard 
face.”  He  waited  a  moment.  Then  a  rare 
smile  kindled  all  his  countenance.  “He’s  found 
his  way  now.  Every  day  he  walks  a  little 
more  firmly.  And  we  are  all  standing  ready 
to  help.” 

Now  the  supper  was  served  and  for  a  while 
the  talk  turned  to  other  things. 

Then  before  the  men  started  home  Coulton 
Moore  had  his  final  word  for  the  day.  It  con¬ 
sisted  of  three  pictures.  One  was  a  memory  of 
Mrs.  Booth,  mother  to  so  many  motherless  men, 
pouring  out  her  love  of  goodness  and  her 
hatred  of  evil  and  her  belief  in  the  redemption 
of  men  in  words  which  glowed  with  power 
while  fifteen  hundred  men  sat  spell-bound  in 


54  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


a  great  prison.  One  was  the  story  of  the  old 
crook  who  had  forgotten  how  to  weep  when, 
one  day,  he  saw  Thomas  Mott  Osborne  walk¬ 
ing  through  the  aisle  of  the  prison  wearing  the 
prison  garb  and  submitting  to  all  the  unlovely 
experiences  met  by  the  men  under  sentence. 
The  innocent  man  in  stripes  broke  the  hard 
heart  of  the  old  criminal  whom  nothing  else 
could  reach.  The  last  picture  was  of  a  “yegg” 
reclaimed  after  years  and  years  of  crime  and 
standing  a  test  which  made  its  appeal  to 
every  instinct  of  his  old  lawless  days.  As  he 
stood  victor  in  that  hour  you  saw  a  hope  for 
him  and  for  all  his  kind. 

“X  know  a  man  may  say  that  it  is  danger¬ 
ous  to  generalize  from  individual  cases/’  ad¬ 
mitted  Moore.  “But  in  these  matters  you 
can’t  leave  the  concrete  man  and  his  victory 
out  of  account.  And  one  man  who  succeeds 
is  more  significant  than  a  dozen  who  fail.” 

“And  what  is  the  secret  of  success?”  inquired 
Henry  Alton. 

“Sometimes  a  man  finds  a  friend,”  replied 
Moore  with  a  thrill  in  his  voice.  “And  some¬ 
times  he  finds  an  open  door  of  opportunity. 
And  sometimes  he  learns  to  pray.” 

By  this  time  the  men  were  ready  for  the 


THE  FURTIVE  PEOPLE 


55 


long  walk  through  the  light  of  the  late  after¬ 
noon.  Benny  Malone  was  unusually  sober.  He 
muttered  half  to  himself  as  he  walked  along. 
“I’ll  have  to  find  a  son  of  Ishmael  when  I  get 
back  to  town.” 

Coulton  Moore  overheard  him. 

“Go  to  it,  old  man,”  he  said.  “When  enough 
men  do  it  we’ll  decrease  the  tribe  of  Ishmael 
in  the  world.” 


VII.  COMMERCE  AND  CHARACTER 


Tom  Tabor  was  to  read  the  paper  of  the 
day. 

“It’s  all  the  fault  of  my  boy,  Tom  the  Third.” 
He  began.  “He  has  been  carrying  Webster’s 
General  History  of  Commerce  under  his  arm  and 
telling  me  what  a  wonderful  time  the  class 
has  been  having  with  that  book  in  his  school. 
The  teacher  must  be  a  wizard.  He  has  these 
boys  sailing  imaginary  ships  in  all  the  seas 
and  delivering  cargoes  in  all  the  ports.  Weil, 
I  couldn’t  let  this  son  of  mine  get  so  far  ahead 
of  me.  So  I  read  Webster’s  book.  Then  I 
really  got  interested.  So  I  bought  Professor 
Clive  Day’s  History  of  Commerce  and  read  it 
with  no  end  of  enjoyment.  About  that  time 
Professor  Van  Metre  published  his  Economic 
History  of  the  United  States.  I  was  all  ready 
for  it  and  read  every  page  as  if  it  had  been 
an  engrossing  novel.  Then  I  got  hold  of  one 
or  two  commercial  geographies.  I  followed 
them  with  more  general  discussions,  always 
paying  particular  attention  to  what  was  said 

about  the  commercial  life  of  the  various  peoples 

56 


COMMERCE  AND  CHARACTER  57 


in  the  various  stages  of  their  history.  And 
out  of  it  all  has  come  this  paper.  My  subject 
is,  ‘Commerce  and  Character.’  ” 

“Prepare  for  the  apotheosis  of  the  status  quo” 
muttered  Hunter  Morrison  under  his  breath 

“The  tradesman  invades  the  minister’s  sanc¬ 
tum,”  threw  out  Waldo  Bryant. 

But  Tom  Tabor  was  perfectly  undisturbed. 
He  waited  for  complete  quiet  and  then  he 
began  his  paper. 

He  struck  a  high  note  at  the  very  beginning 
by  advancing  the  claim  that  trade  began  when 
men  discovered  that  they  could  do  for  each 
other  what  they  could  not  do  for  themselves. 
The  paper  was  really  a  tale  of  many  cities. 
You  watched  the  bustle  and  hurry  on  the 
streets  of  ancient  Nineveh.  You  felt  the  pulse 
of  Athens  when  it  was  a  mistress  of  commerce 
as  well  as  a  mistress  of  art.  You  saw  the 
manifold  roads  leading  toward  Rome  filled 
with  merchandise  as  well  as  echoing  to  the 
feet  of  hard-faced  soldiers.  You  saw  the 
growth  of  the  commercial  life  of  the  Italian 
cities  of  the  Middle  Ages.  And  even  as  you 
felt  their  artistic  splendor  so  you  responded  to 
the  skill  of  their  merchants  with  their  wide 
lying  trade.  You  moved  about  among  the 


58  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


cities  of  the  Hanseatic  League  as  it  became  an 
empire  of  buying  and  selling  and  a  political 
power  as  well.  You  followed  the  growth  of 
the  new  commerce  after  the  great  age  of  dis¬ 
covery.  You  followed  in  the  ways  of  Portugal 
during  its  days  of  powerful  commerce.  You 
were  fairly  dazzled  by  the  brilliancy  of  the 
golden  hour  in  the  commercial  life  of  Spain. 
You  watched  Holland  make  its  buying  and 
selling  an  effective  instrument  of  power.  Then 
you  surveyed  the  great  struggle  between  France 
and  England.  It  was  a  political  struggle.  It 
was  a  religious  struggle.  And  in  a  very  real 
way  it  was  also  a  commercial  struggle.  And 
both  in  Asia  and  in  America  England  was 
triumphant.  You  watched  the  emerging  of  the 
New  Republic.  You  felt  the  quality  of  its  life 
as  a  carrying  nation  during  the  earlier  stages 
of  the  Napoleonic  wars.  You  followed  its 
activities  in  a  later  day  when  its  clipper  ships 
were  the  most  wonderful  carriers  in  all  the 
world.  Then  you  watched  the  steam  power 
of  England  drive  the  clipper  ship  from  its 
place  of  power  on  the  sea.  You  surveyed  the 
building  of  great  sea  giants  and  the  spreading 
of  a  network  of  rails  over  all  the  continents. 
You  saw  the  machine  age  transform  production 


COMMERCE  AND  CHARACTER  59 


just  as  the  new  transportation  transformed  the 
delivery  of  manufactured  goods.  Before  the 
World  War  you  saw  the  railroad  mileage  of 
the  world  reach  a  total  of  over  six  hundred  thou¬ 
sand  miles.  You  saw  the  world’s  output  of  coal 
become  a  billion  and  a  third  of  tons  in  1912. 
You  saw  the  world’s  total  registered  merchant 
tonnage  reach  nearly  forty-seven  million  tons 
in  1913.  In  this  same  year  of  1913  you  saw 
the  world’s  trade  reach  the  sum  of  about 
forty-two  billion  dollars. 

Turning  from  this  array  of  facts  and  figures 
and  pictures  of  trade,  Tom  Tabor  brought 
his  paper  to  a  close  with  a  brief  but  trenchant 
analysis.  “A  civilization  is  only  safe,”  he  de¬ 
clared  “when  its  growth  in  production  and 
distribution  is  paralleled  by  its  growth  in  in¬ 
tegrity.  Character  must  keep  pace  with  com¬ 
merce.  The  tragedy  of  the  modern  world  lies 
just  in  the  fact  that  the  two  steeds  have  not 
gone  down  the  road  together.  Our  prosperity 
has  outrun  our  integrity.  Our  commerce  has 
developed  more  rapidly  than  our  character.” 
There  were  clear  and  vivid  illustrations  of  what 
the  author  of  the  paper  meant  by  these  general¬ 
izations,  and  then  there  was  a  final  word  as 
to  the  significance  of  the  Christian  Church  as 


60  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


a  great  producer  and  distributor  of  character. 
This  was  the  last  sentence:  “The  church  deals 
in  the  one  commodity  of  which  the  modern 
world  stands  in  most  desperate  need.” 

Bowman  Tillman  opened  the  discussion: 

“There  is  a  devotee  of  Babson  in  my  church 
who  would  like  to  read  that  paper,”  he  de¬ 
clared.  “And  for  my  part  I  am  immensely 
grateful  to  Tabor  for  putting  the  church  where 
it  belongs  in  the  great  economic  structure.” 

“That’s  just  the  question,”  broke  in  Hunter 
Morrison.  “Where  does  the  church  belong? 
Is  it  to  be  the  perpetual  servant  of  the  present 
order  with  all  its  inequalities,  or  is  it  to  help 
to  produce  a  new  order  which  shall  really 
reflect  the  will  of  God  in  the  economic  life? 
It  seems  to  me  that  Tabor  has  taken  us  right 
up  to  the  edge  of  the  critical  matters  and  then 
has  closed  his  paper.  He  has  not  told  us 
whether  commerce  in  the  present  order  can  be 
made  Christian.” 

Fletcher  Hilton  was  ready  with  a  charac¬ 
teristic  word: 

“Any  system  will  break  down  which  is  not 
based  upon  individual  integrity  at  last,”  he 
said.  “And  with  all  its  faults  our  present 
system  has  unrealized  possibilities  of  good  when 


COMMERCE  AND  CHARACTER  61 


it  is  administered  by  men  whose  personal 
character  has  developed  a  sense  of  social 
responsibility.” 

Morris  MacDonald  looked  on  a  little  whim¬ 
sically  at  this  bit  of  thrust  and  counterthrust 
so  typical  of  the  two  men.  Then  he  took  up 
the  discussion: 

“As  I  have  been  listening  to  Tabor  I  have 
been  thinking  all  the  while  of  an  invisible  com¬ 
merce  which  he  did  not  mention.  I  could  see 
not  only  the  bales  containing  all  the  material 
wares  of  trade,  but  the  vast  treasures  of  the 
mind  which  have  been  carried  about  on  all 
the  ships  and  on  all  the  routes  of  trade.  The 
commerce  in  ideas  has  often  been  far  more 
important  than  the  commerce  in  things.” 

“And  I  would  like  to  carry  that  a  step 
farther,”  said  James  Clayton.  “There  is  a 
commerce  in  the  things  of  the  conscience  and  the 
things  of  the  spirit  which  has  changed  the  face 
of  the  world.  When  Paul  embarked  in  a  Medi¬ 
terranean  grain  ship  something  more  important 
was  on  board  than  all  the  food  supplies.  When 
merchants  with  packs  on  their  backs  told  the 
story  of  the  Christian  religion  to  ladies  in  far 
fortresses  while  they  showed  their  silks  and 
laces,  a  commerce  in  ideals  of  life  was  being 


62  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


carried  on  which  was  to  have  its  own  share  in 
the  making  of  the  modern  world.  When  Pacific 
steamers  carry  prophets  with  the  flame  of  the 
Christian  passion  in  their  hearts  to  the  wait¬ 
ing  East  they  carry  destiny  with  them.” 

Henry  Alton  had  a  quiet  light  in  his  eye  as 
he  listened.  Now  he  spoke  that  last  word  of 
the  day’s  discussion. 

“We  need  them  all,”  he  said.  “The  mer¬ 
chants  in  things  and  the  merchants  in  ideas 
and  the  merchants  in  ideals.  We  need  them 
all  together  thinking  and  struggling  and  work¬ 
ing.  We  must  be  clear-eyed  and  honest  and 
steady.  We  must  be  as  conservative  as  ancient 
good.  We  must  be  as  radical  as  newly  dis¬ 
covered  truth.  We  must  remember  that  no 
group  has  a  monopoly  in  the  possession  of  truth. 
It  will  require  all  the  experience  and  all  the 
idealism  of  all  the  groups  to  bring  in  the  better 
day.  The  prophet  of  scorn  is  sure  to  despise 
something  which  he  needs  for  the  completion 
of  his  own  work.  Numberless  merchants  who 
go  about  with  good  will  as  their  commodity 
must  help  us  to  live  together  patiently,  to  under¬ 
stand  each  other  with  friendly  sympathy.  And 
then  we  can  create  the  structure  upon  which 
the  nobler  commerce  of  the  future  will  rest.” 


VIII.  THE  CREATIVE  PAST 


Benny  Malone  had  been  converted  to  the 
study  of  history.  It  began  with  H.  G.  Wells. 
He  read  the  Outline  of  History  with  feverish 
interest.  Then  he  read  Breasted’s  Ancient 
Times,  and  Robinson’s  Medieval  and  Modern 
Times ,  hurrying  through  them  to  use  his  own 
phrase,  “sixty  miles  an  hour.”  W7hen  Pro¬ 
fessor  Van  Loon’s  Story  of  Mankind  was  pub¬ 
lished  he  threw  himself  into  it  as  if  it  had 
been  a  thrilling  tale  of  adventure — “as  it  is,” 
he  declared.  Then  he  got  hold  of  that  ripe 
and  thoughtful  little  book.  The  Living  Past,  by 
F.  S.  Marvin,  and  perused  it  with  fascinated 
interest.  Borrowing  from  the  knowledge  of 
more  erudite  friends,  he  secured  masterly  vol¬ 
umes  which  captured  the  very  meaning  of  great 
periods  like  that  of  fifth-century  Athens  and 
thirteenth-century  Europe  and  the  period  of  the 
Renaissance  and  the  Protestant  Revolt  and  the 
French  Revolution  and  the  new  industrial  age. 
Then  when  his  mind  was  full  of  the  move¬ 
ment  of  it  all  he  wrote  a  paper  for  the  club. 

The  men  were  in  high  good  humor  that  day. 

Hunter  Morrison  began  the  chaffing  as  they 

took  their  places  about  the  table. 

63 


64  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


“I  can  guess  Benny’s  secret,”  he  declared. 
4 ‘He’s  going  to  take  us  into  the  mind  of  Max 
Eastman  and  there  discover  all  the  long  hidden 
mysteries  of  the  philosophy  of  humor.” 

“I  didn’t  know  radicals  had  a  sense  of  hu¬ 
mor,”  put  in  Waldo  Bryant. 

“You  prefer  the  glittering  mental  swordplay 
of  magnates  who  are  suffocated  by  their  own 
magnificence,”  Morrison  flashed  back  with 
delighted  malice. 

“I  prefer  to  hear  Malone  read  a  paper  on 
‘Salvation  by  Mirth,’  ”  responded  Bryant.  “He 
knows  all  sorts  of  secrets  of  conquering  evils 
by  making  them  ridiculous.  If  you  can  get  a 
man  to  laugh  at  a  thing  with  scornful  disdain  he 
is  free  from  its  power.  If  you  can  get  a  sulk¬ 
ing  angry  man  to  laugh,  he  forgets  his  wrath.” 

“Who’s  going  to  read  this  paper?”  inter¬ 
rupted  Baldwin  Paxton. 

By  this  time  the  men  were  all  in  their  places 
and  Malone  began. 

“My  subject  is,  ‘The  Momentum  of  His¬ 
tory.’  ” 

He  gave  a  tiny  preliminary  cough.  Then  he 
embarked  on  his  first  paragraph. 

“The  past  has  been  buried  a  good  many 
times.  But  it  has  never  died.  You  think 


THE  CREATIVE  PAST 


65 


you  are  through  with  it.  But  you  never  are. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  past  hasn't  happened. 
It  has  only  begun  to  happen.  And  the  future 
is  not  yet  to  come.  It  is  partly  over.  And  the 
present  is  a  mixture  of  what  has  been  and  what 
is  yet  to  be - ” 

“Shades  of  Gilbert  Chesterton!”  Bowen 
Tillman  burst  out. 

Malone  went  on:  “The  past  has  gotten  up 
steam.  It  can’t  stop.  It  is  in  process  of  run¬ 
ning  away  with  the  world.  If  a  man  really 
starts  something,  he’s  more  alive  after  he  is 
dead  than  he  was  when  he  walked  about  in 
the  flesh.  You  can  manage  the  living  people 
if  you  just  know  what  to  do  with  the  ghosts.” 

By  this  time  the  paper  itself  had  gained 
a  fair  amount  of  momentum  and  the  members 
of  the  club  leaned  forward  a  little  as  Benny 
Malone  went  on  with  what  one  of  them  after¬ 
ward  described  as  a  canter  through  history. 

He  began  with  creatures  in  the  water  and 
described  the  adventure  of  those  who  made 
the  great  experiment  of  living  upon  the  land. 
He  spoke  whimsically  of  the  pensive  memories 
of  those  whose  fins  had  turned  into  arms.  He 
painted  a  graphic  picture  of  the  fearful  courage 
with  which  an  early  man  watched  a  fire  kindled 


66  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


by  lightning,  drew  near  to  it,  and  with  shud¬ 
dering  daring  fed  it  and  kept  it  alive  in  the 
world.  He  moved  with  galloping  steps  through 
the  old  stone  age,  the  new  stone  age,  and  on 
to  the  period  when  civilization  appears  in  the 
valleys  of  the  Tigris  and  the  Euphrates  and 
in  the  valley  of  the  Nile.  He  pictured  the 
early  Phoenicians  building  their  ships,  and  at 
last  with  an  audacity  of  heroism  staying  out 
of  sight  of  land  in  the  dark  of  the  night  rowing 
all  the  while  and  coming  to  another  shore  on 
another  day.  He  put  clearly  that  old  struggle 
as  the  Greeks  took  the  sea  power  away  from 
the  Phoenicians.  And  it  was  almost  as  if 
Waldo  Bryant  had  been  speaking  as  he  told 
of  that  great  flowering  of  the  human  spirit 
whose  beauty  and  fragrance  have  made  the 
fifth  century  in  Athens  immortal.  He  swept 
through  the  period  of  the  rise  of  the  great 
power  north  of  Greece  and  eagerly  followed 
Alexander  the  Great  in  his  conquests.  He 
paused  to  watch  the  growth  of  Rome  and  its 
fight  to  the  death  with  Carthage.  He  drew  a 
far-flung  picture  of  the  grandeur  of  the  Empire 
and  stood  in  silent  awe  in  a  little  town  not 
far  from  the  eastern  Mediterranean  coast  to 
listen  to  the  first  cry  of  a  child  whose  voice  is 


THE  CREATIVE  PAST 


67 


to  speak  a  new  word  of  hope  for  the  world. 
Moving  back,  he  traced  the  coming  of  the  Bar¬ 
barians  and  then  on  to  the  break-up  of  Rome, 
the  rise  of  feudalism  and  the  imperial  dream 
of  Charlemagne.  He  outlined  the  story  of  the 
Holy  Roman  Empire  with  its  struggles  be¬ 
tween  mighty  Popes  and  mighty  emperors. 
The  Crusades  captured  his  imagination.  The 
new  life  in  Europe  was  like  new  life  in  his  own 
soul.  The  love  of  beauty  in  the  south  and 
the  love  of  goodness  in  the  north  spelled  out 
the  story  of  the  springtime  of  the  world.  You 
watched  great  nations  rise  and  struggle.  You 
watched  brave  sailors  discover  new  continents. 
You  surveyed  the  beginnings  of  political  lib¬ 
erty  and  the  first  struggling  steps  of  democ¬ 
racy.  You  saw  the  birth  of  science.  You 
listened  to  the  whir  of  the  machines  which 
were  to  make  a  new  world.  You  watched  many 
a  movement  of  the  mind  and  many  a  struggle 
of  the  human  spirit.  And  then  you  found 
yourself  in  all  the  bitter  convulsions  of  the 
world  war.  And  out  of  it  all  you  came  trail¬ 
ing  clouds  of  glory  and  ignominy,  with  a  her¬ 
itage  of  love  and  hate,  of  good  and  evil,  with 
the  past  blowing  by  you  like  a  whilrwind  to 
make  the  future  which  is  to  be. 


68  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


“Whew!”  cried  Tom  Tabor  as  the  paper 
closed.  “Let  me  get  my  breath!” 

“Help  me  to  catch  hold  of  something,”  said 
Monroe  Burton,  “so  that  I  can  stop.” 

“That  may  not  be  scholarship  but  it  is  life,” 
declared  Morris  MacDonald  in  open  admiration. 

Then  the  men  leaned  back  in  their  chairs  for  a 
moment.  And  after  that  Baldwin  Paxton  began : 

“It  all  made  me  think  of  H.  G.  Wells’  little 
book  on  the  Salvaging  of  Civilization.  It’s  all 
very  wonderful  and  I  wish  a  great  many  people 
knew  about  it.  But,  after  all,  is  that  realty 
a  movement  in  the  direction  of  saving  the 
world?  If  everybody  knew  all  that  Malone  has 
told  us  and  ever  so  much  more,  would  it  bring 
the  day  of  better  things  any  nearer?” 

“It  would  at  least  mean  that  people  would 
have  a  great  fund  of  common  knowledge  about 
which  they  could  talk,”  declared  Hunter  Mor¬ 
rison.  “And  if  a  man  withra  message  came 
along,  there  would  be  a  great  mass  of  common 
mental  experience  to  which  he  could  appeal. 
The  world  needs  an  intellectual  common  for  all 
just  about  as  much  as  it  needs  anything  else.” 

“People  could  hardly  know  all  these  things 
without  thinking  about  them,”  ventured  Tom 
Tabor.  “And  out  of  such  thought  all  sorts 


THE  CREATIVE  PAST 


69 


of  good  things  might  come.  The  world  can’t 
do  much  work  on  an  empty  stomach.  And 
it  can’t  do  much  work  on  an  empty  mind.” 

“As  a  matter  of  fact,”  said  Waldo  Bryant, 
“the  more  you  know  about  the  past  the  larger 
amount  of  material  you  have  to  misinterpret. 
If  you  have  any  panacea,  you  can  write  the 
history  of  the  world  in  such  a  way  that  it  seems 
to  make  just  that  remedy  inevitable.  A 
knowledge  of  history  is  a  great  thing.  But 
it  won’t  bring  the  millennium.  It  may  just 
bring  a  more  brilliant  chaos.” 

Morris  MacDonald  was  now  ready  to  speak. 
And  his  words  proved  the  last  for  the  day. 

“In  the  long  run  the  laboratory  does  its  work 
if  men  really  know  about  the  experiments. 
It  is  only  when  an  old  failure  is  forgotten  that 
we  make  the  same  mistake  again.  Any  par¬ 
ticular  generation  may  have  a  brilliant  chaos 
and  try  to  justify  it  by  history.  But  if  the 
men  of  good  will  age  after  age  know  the  sig¬ 
nificant  elements  in  the  past,  you  do  get  for¬ 
ward.  Of  course  you  have  to  keep  making 
men  of  good  will.  And  that  is  the  reason  that 
the  New  Testament  contains  the  most  sig¬ 
nificant  series  of  documents  which  come  out 
of  the  past.” 


IX.  THE  COLOR  SCHEME  OF  THE 

WORLD 


Bowen  Tillman  had  been  reading  Lothrop 
Stoddard’s  Rising  Tide  of  Color.  The  book 
captured  his  imagination.  He  perused  it  with 
a  sort  of  fascinated  dislike.  For  days  he  found 
it  difficult  to  think  of  anything  else.  He  got 
hold  of  other  literature  on  the  same  subject. 
He  sat  in  his  study  late  at  night  thinking  of 
the  problem.  He  went  among  the  varied 
peoples  whom  his  own  cosmopolitan  parish 
served  with  many  thoughts  about  the  races 
surging  in  his  mind.  Then  he  reduced  his 
thinking  and  his  reading  to  a  paper  for  the 
club. 

It  was  a  clear  cold  winter’s  day  when  the 
men  came  together  and  each  one  seemed  to 
bring  in  some  of  the  hard,  vigorous  tonic  of 
the  outer  air.  Soon  overcoats  were  laid  aside 
amid  the  exchange  of  vigorous  greetings,  and, 
mellowed  by  the  warmth  of  the  room,  the 
members  of  the  Club  sat  about  the  table  wait¬ 
ing  for  the  order  of  the  day. 

Bowen  Tillman  had  the  presence  of  an  orator 

70 


COLOR  SCHEME  OF  THE  WORLD  71 


and  a  voice  whose  varied  and  alluring  modu¬ 
lations  had  their  own  share  in  holding  the  con¬ 
gregation  of  his  great  church.  Even  when  he 
read  he  forgot  his  manuscript  and  addressed  an 
invisible  audience  gathered  all  about  the  little 
group  of  listeners  who  chanced  to  be  with  him. 

“My  subject,”  he  said,  “is  ‘The  Color  Scheme 
of  the  World.’  ” 

There  was  a  dangerous  light  in  the  eye  of 
Benny  Malone,  but  he  resisted  the  temptation 
to  interrupt. 

“The  world  now  contains  about  a  billion 
seven  hundred  million  people,”  began  Tillman. 
“Roughly  speaking  five  hundred  and  fifty  mil¬ 
lions  of  them  are  white,  five  hundred  millions 
of  them  are  yellow,  four  hundred  and  fifty 
millions  of  them  are  brown,  a  hundred  and 
fifty  millions  of  them  are  black  and  forty  mil¬ 
lions  of  them  are  red.  There  are  two  colored 
men  for  every  white  man  in  the  world.  At  the 
beginning  of  the  sixteenth  century  there  were 
about  seventy  millions  of  white  people  in  the 
world.  The  last  four  hundred  years  have  been 
the  great  period  of  expansion  and  growth  of 
power  for  the  white  race.  When  the  Great 
WTar  broke  out  the  white  race  controlled  prac¬ 
tically  nine  tenths  of  the  territory  of  the  world.” 


72  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


After  this  preliminary  plunge  into  a  sea  of 
figures  Bowen  Tillman  described  the  growth 
of  the  white  race  and  the  expansion  of  its 
influence.  He  discussed  its  contributions  to 
art  and  letters  and  the  practical  sciences.  He 
showed  how  it  produced  the  industrial  revolu¬ 
tion  which  transformed  the  life  of  the  world. 
Then  he  placed  the  races  as  to  their  present 
distribution:  the  yellow  race  principally  in 
Asia,  the  brown  race  in  southern  Asia  and 
northern  Africa,  the  black  race  primarily  in 
Africa,  and  the  red  race  in  the  southern  part 
of  North  America  and  in  South  America;  the 
white  race  in  Europe  and  North  America  and 
Australia  and,  as  far  as  lordship  is  concerned, 
in  much  of  the  remainder  of  the  world.  He 
spoke  of  the  easy  and  assured  mastery  of  the 
white  race,  of  its  almost  insolent  consciousness 
of  race  superiority  and  the  power  for  sustained 
dominance.  Then  he  turned  to  the  war  be¬ 
tween  Japan  and  Russia  as  the  amazing  event 
which  revealed  the  capacity  of  a  people  be¬ 
longing  to  the  yellow  race  to  defeat  a  people 
belonging  to  the  white  race.  He  described  the 
fashion  in  which  the  thrill  of  that  achieve¬ 
ment  went  through  the  world  of  color.  Then 
he  described  the  suicidal  character  of  the 


COLOR  SCHEME  OF  THE  WORLD  73 


World  War  when  nations  of  the  white  race 
fought  each  other  on  a  scale  unparalleled  and 
brought  in  men  of  color  to  slay  their  white 
foes.  He  analyzed  the  world  unrest  following 
the  war,  when  every  race  began  to  cherish 
the  hope  through  its  own  power  or  by  means 
of  some  alliance  to  have  a  share  in  limiting  the 
dominion  of  the  white  masters  of  the  world. 
He  appraised  the  strength  and  ambition  of 
Japan,  the  mighty  stirrings  among  the  forces 
of  Islam,  the  new  and  sharp  race  consciousness 
among  Negroes,  and  even  the  cool,  observant 
watchfulness  of  the  red  man,  readv  to  have 
his  share  in  any  new  alignment  of  the  forces 
of  the  world. 

It  was  all  done  at  a  white  heat  of  personal 
interest  and  it  was  easy  to  see  that  he  was 
carrying  his  hearers  with  him.  Then  Tillman 
turned  to  the  one  great  question — the  relation 
of  all  this  to  the  progress  of  the  Christian  forces 
of  the  world.  He  used  bold  and  bitter  words 
to  picture  the  horror  of  that  war  of  remorse¬ 
less  and  savage  races  struggling  for  the  pos¬ 
session  of  the  world,  the  war  toward  which 
we  are  drifting  unless  the  forces  of  sanity  and 
good  will  and  justice  and  brotherhood  can 
come  into  control  of  the  destinies  of  men.  He 


74  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


spoke  of  the  missionary  enterprise  as  the  one 
hope  for  the  safety  of  the  world.  He  described 
that  mobilization  of  the  forces  of  all  Christen¬ 
dom  which  would  pour  the  energies  of  the 
civilization  created  by  Christ  into  the  great¬ 
est  of  all  endeavors,  the  endeavor  to  win  the 
world  for  a  permanent  life  of  good  will.  He 
closed  with  two  burning  sentences:  “Racial 
rivalry  and  hatred  pursued  to  their  bitter  end 
will  destroy  civilization.  The  principles  of 
Jesus,  if  accepted,  will  make  it  possible  for 
the  races  to  live  together  in  the  same  world 
with  mutual  respect  and  with  permanent 
friendliness.” 

There  was  a  little  period  of  rather  tense 
quiet  when  the  paper  had  been  read.  Then 
Baldwin  Paxton  broke  the  silence: 

“I’m  afraid  the  problem  is  even  more  difficult 
than  Tillman  made  out,”  he  said.  “It  is  easy 
to  talk  about  good  will.  But  with  something 
like  sixty  million  Japanese  living  in  territory 
whose  productive  area  is  about  the  size  of  the 
State  of  Montana  and  crying  out  for  room 
while  the  civilized  world  goes  about  the  task 
of  closing  doors  in  all  the  continents,  you  have 
a  hard  set  of  economic  facts  which  will  not 
yield  to  sentiment.” 


COLOR  SCHEME  OF  THE  WORLD  75 


“Opening  the  doors  would  only  be  a  tem¬ 
porary  alleviation,”  said  Monroe  Burton.  “You 
would  lower  the  standard  of  living  wherever 
the  doors  were  opened,  and  that  relentless  old 
law  of  Malthus  teaches  us  that  the  land  of 
larger  opportunity  would  soon  fill  up,  and 
then  there  would  be  just  the  same  pressure  in 
a  depleted  world.” 

Hunter  Morrison  sprang  into  the  discussion 
at  this  point:  “A  scientific  nation  may  not 
find  Malthus  so  relentless,”  he  said.  “The 
only  way  to  prevent  the  nations  from  economic 
war  at  last  is  by  the  control  of  the  fertility  of 
the  races.  Overproduction  is  more  than  a 
folly;  it  is  crime.” 

“France  has  learned  the  secret  of  limiting 
the  birth  rate  all  too  well.  And  France  doesn’t 
need  to  know  that  secret.  China  and  Japan 
have  not  learned  it  at  all.  And  it  is  the  secret 
they  need  most  of  all  to  know.”  It  was  Coulton 
Moore  who  threw  this  remark  into  the  cauldron 
of  discussion  which  was  fairly  seething  by  this 
time. 

Waldo  Bryant  now  spoke  up: 

“It  is  all  being  complicated  by  the  writers 
of  the  flashing  and  flaming  sentences  which 
the  public  likes  to  read,”  he  said.  “Recently 


76  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


a  novelist  of  little  literary  distinction  but  with 
an  astonishing  popular  vogue  has  written  an 
attack  on  Japanese  character  whose  inhuman 
brutality  is  almost  unbelievable.  And  multi¬ 
tudes  of  people  have  their  opinions  formed  by 
just  such  writers.  The  problem  is  desperate 
enough  if  we  all  keep  our  heads.  And  that 
is  just  what  some  writers  would  prevent.” 

Tom  Tabor  was  knitting  his  brow  as  the 
discussion  went  on.  Now  he  spoke.  “There 
are  a  good  many  people  in  California  and 
British  Columbia  and  Australia  who  will  tell 
you  that  you  face  the  eloquence  of  very  ugly 
facts  when  the  bars  are  let  down.  I  don’t 
wonder  that  some  of  them  become  hectic.  The 
lowering  of  the  standard  of  living  simply  means 
the  driving  out — indeed,  the  destruction  at 
last — of  the  higher  type  of  civilization.” 

There  was  now  a  good  deal  of  rapid  cross¬ 
fire  discussion.  And  then  there  was  an  ex¬ 
pectant  quiet  as  Henry  Alton  spoke. 

“Nobody  can  deny  the  difficulties  of  the 
situation,”  he  said.  “iVnd  the  thoughtful  know 
that  the  fuse  is  laid  to  many  a  dangerous 
explosive.  But  just  because  race  hatred  means 
the  destruction  of  what  is  good  in  all  the  races 
the  real  statesmen  of  every  race  are  eager  to 


COLOR  SCHEME  OF  THE  WORLD  77 


find  a  way.  The  invasion  of  the  Orient  by 
the  moving  wheels  of  our  modern  machines  is 
a  step  toward  that  common  life  for  all  the 
world  which  will  have  its  own  bearing  at  last 
on  the  economic  pressure.  Slowly  but  inev¬ 
itably  we  will  move  toward  a  life  for  all  the 
world  where  the  workers  of  one  land  will  not 
be  capable  of  underselling  the  workers  of 
another.  The  new  transportation  and  the  fac¬ 
tories  are  already  transforming  the  Orient. 
There  will  be  terrible  labor  struggles.  But 
at  last  the  economic  life  of  the  world  will  find 
that  equilibrium  in  which  there  is  a  new  prom¬ 
ise  of  safety.  Then  with  a  scientific  under¬ 
standing  of  the  relation  between  race  productiv¬ 
ity  and  the  production  of  food  and  all  material 
things  a  new  equilibrium  between  the  supply 
and  demand  of  people  and  the  necessities  of 
life  will  be  established.  The  patience  to  work 
and  wait  for  this  and  the  character  to  secure 
it  must  be  provided  by  the  motives  of  the 
Christian  religion.  I  agree  with  Tillman  that 
the  missionary  enterprise  has  at  its  heart  and 
in  its  brain  the  hope  of  the  world.” 


X.  GENERAL  WILLIAM  BOOTH 


During  the  latter  part  of  the  month  of 
January  most  of  the  religious  weeklies  had 
been  full  of  accounts  of  evangelistic  services. 
And  even  the  great  dailies  of  the  city  had  given 
a  good  deal  of  space  to  some  of  the  more  spec¬ 
tacular  services  held  for  the  spreading  abroad 
of  the  experience  and  practice  of  the  Chris¬ 
tian  faith.  New  fires  of  devotion  were  burn¬ 
ing  everywhere  and  for  a  time  religion  had 
become  the  main  topic  of  discussion  among 
all  classes  of  people  in  the  great  town.  Fletcher 
Hilton  was  in  his  element.  He  conducted 
wonderfully  effective  evangelistic  meetings  in 
his  own  church.  Then  he  gave  himself  unspar¬ 
ingly  to  helping  other  ministers  in  similar 
work.  He  looked  a  trifle  thin  but  very  much 
alive  as  he  came  to  the  meeting  of  the  Club 
on  the  day  when  he  was  to  read  the  paper. 
There  was  a  hint  of  the  light  never  seen  on 
sea  or  land  in  his  eye,  but  he  carried  himself 
with  his  usual  quiet  poise. 

“I  don’t  believe  he  has  any  paper,”  declared 
Tom  Tabor  as  Hilton  entered.  “He’s  been 

78 


GENERAL  WILLIAM  BOOTH 


79 


too  busy  conducting  five  meetings  a  day  and 
eight  on  Sunday.  He  hasn’t  had  time  to  put 
his  pen  on  a  page  of  paper.” 

“Evangelists  do  not  need  heads.  They  only 
need  hearts,”  said  Hunter  Morrison. 

“That’s  where  you  are  completely  wrong. 
It  takes  all  the  brains  a  man  has  to  do  a  good 
piece  of  evangelistic  work.  And  more  brains 
than  most  of  us  are  able  to  bring  to  the  task 
would  find  use  and  opportunity.  In  any  event 
I’ve  read  a  book  a  week  through  all  this  period 
of  special  meetings.  And  the  paper  I  am  going 
to  read  to-day  was  finished  last  night.” 

“Bravo  for  Hilton!”  cried  Morris  Mac¬ 
Donald,  heartily.  The  minister  who  found 
time  to  read  always  roused  the  enthusiasm  of 
this  professor  of  systematic  theology. 

Hilton  looked  at  him  with  a  twinkle  in  his  eye. 

“Really  I  have  a  right  to  that  bravo,”  he 
said.  “I  have  read  five  books  on  doctrine  in 
the  last  seven  weeks.  And  one  of  them  was 
The  Christian  Faith ,  by  your  old  friend,  Olin 
Alfred  Curtis.  That  book  is  worth  a  whole 
course  in  theology  to  me.” 

By  this  time  the  men  were  all  in  their  places. 
Hilton  carefully  took  his  paper  from  the  inner 
pocket  of  his  coat. 


80  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


“My  subject  is  ‘A  Napoleon  of  Evangelism,’  ” 
lie  began.  “And  I  am  going  to  ask  you  to  con¬ 
sider  the  life  of  General  William  Booth.” 

Commissioner  G.  S.  Railton’s  Life  of  General 
William  Booth  and  the  two  fat  volumes  in  which 
that  powerful  journalist,  Harold  Begbie,  dis¬ 
cusses  the  General  had  been  read  and  mastered 
by  Hilton.  He  had  personal  contacts  with  the 
work  of  the  Army,  and  he  reached  out  occa¬ 
sionally  for  a  comment  or  an  estimate  from 
some  contemporary  writer.  You  had  a  feeling 
that  he  had  written  in  love  about  a  man 
whose  career  had  captured  his  imagination  and 
inspired  his  own  life. 

The  paper  began  by  reminding  the  listeners 
that  in  1829,  the  year  of  the  birth  of  William 
Booth,  George  the  Fourth  was  on  the  throne 
of  England  and  Andrew  Jackson  became  the 
President  of  the  United  States.  There  was  a 
brief  account  of  the  ambitious  business  man 
who  lost  everything  in  unfortunate  speculation 
who  was  the  father  of  Booth  and  of  the  proud, 
reserved  woman  nursing  her  humiliation  when 
financial  reverses  brought  hardship  to  the 
home:  a  mother  whose  memories  were  brighter 
than  her  hopes.  It  was  not  a  religious  home, 
and  it  is  remarkable  that  out  of  it  came  the 


GENERAL  WILLIAM  BOOTH 


81 


mightiest  exponent  of  evangelical  religion  whom 
the  century  produced.  Hilton  described  the 
beginning  of  Booth’s  religious  life  in  a  vital 
and  commanding  personal  acceptance  and 
appropriation  of  the  realities  of  evangelical 
piety  when  he  was  but  a  lad.  He  pictured  his 
early  efforts  to  win  others  to  the  faith  which 
had  given  a  new  gladness  to  his  own  spirit. 
Then  there  was  an  account  of  his  days  and 
years  of  struggle,  of  the  period  when  he  was  a 
Methodist  minister,  and  of  the  fashion  in  which 
his  vivid  and  eager  spirit  wrought  in  the  midst 
of  surroundings  hardened  by  convention  and 
secured  results  which  both  shocked  and  startled 
many  of  his  brethren.  The  tale  of  his  court¬ 
ship  of  Catherine  Mumford  was  told  with 
hearty  sympathy.  You  felt  the  virile  intel¬ 
lectual  power  and  sturdy  will  of  the  young 
woman  and  the  combination  of  humble  affection 
and  flashes  of  masterfulness  in  the  young  man. 
You  came  at  last  to  the  crisis  when  Booth 
refused  to  compromise  with  a  church  which 
failed  to  give  him  a  real  standing  room  and 
with  his  wife  embarked  upon  the  unknown  seas 
not  knowing  what  the  future  would  bring 
forth.  You  watched  the  first  beginnings  of 
the  Salvation  Army  and  its  formal  organiza- 


82  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


tion  in  1878.  You  were  allowed  to  look  into 
the  soul  of  Booth  and  see  the  consuming  pas¬ 
sion  for  the  least  and  the  lowest  and  the  last, 
a  passion  which  mastered  his  mind,  dominated 
his  conscience,  and  swept  through  his  heart  in 
gales  of  ever-renewed  intensity  of  feeling.  You 
witnessed  the  strange  and  spectacular  methods 
of  the  army.  You  watched  its  coming  to  blows 
with  the  liquor  traffic.  You  saw  the  flash  of 
its  sword  as  it  fought  impurity.  With  utter 
abandon  and  with  utter  daring  it  set  itself 
against  those  dark  and  disintegrating  forces 
which  destroy  men  and  deplete  civilizations. 
You  saw  the  forces  of  evil  gather  their  wrath¬ 
ful  energies  together  for  the  complete  undoing 
of  this  new  foe.  YTou  were  amazed  at  the  fury 
and  the  malignity  of  the  persecution.  Yrou 
were  astonished  at  the  sincere  and  good  men 
who  opposed  the  Army.  Then  you  saw  the 
clouds  clearing.  You  saw  the  Army  spreading 
all  over  the  world.  You  saw  its  General  recog¬ 
nized  as  one  of  the  most  distinguished  men  of 
his  age.  You  saw  Oxford  give  him  the  honor¬ 
ary  degree  of  Doctor  of  Civil  Laws.  Y7ou  saw 
London  in  formal  and  splendid  fashion  give 
him  the  freedom  of  the  city.  You  saw  him 
welcomed  in  audience  by  the  King  of  his  own 


GENERAL  WILLIAM  BOOTH 


83 


land  and  by  many  another  ruler.  You  saw  him 
travel  in  triumph  among  the  nations,  every¬ 
where  received  with  amazing  honor  and  rever¬ 
ence.  And  all  the  while  you  saw  him  busy 
perfecting  his  w'orld-wide  organization  for  bring¬ 
ing  the  gospel  to  those  in  darkest  and  most 
terrible  need.  You  witnessed  the  beginning 
and  growth  of  his  social  work  until  he  was 
doing  as  much  for  the  bodies  as  he  was  doing 
for  the  souls  of  men.  You  saw  him  bend  under 
tragic  grief,  as  when  his  wife  died  after  years 
of  intolerable  suffering  with  a  disease  which 
stabs  its  victim  with  repeated  and  cumulative 
hours  of  pain.  You  saw  him  when,  blind  at 
last,  he  declared  that  he  had  tried  to  serve 
God  and  the  people  with  his  eyes  and  now  he 
would  try  to  serve  God  and  the  people  with¬ 
out  his  eyes.  You  saw  the  coming  of  the  last 
hour  when  the  valiant  old  man,  every  inch  a 
soldier  and  every  inch  a  general,  laid  down 
his  sword. 

As  he  came  to  the  close  of  the  paper  Hilton 
read  passages  from  Nicholas  Vachel  Lindsay’s 
poem  “General  William  Booth  Enters  into 
Heaven”  1: 


1  Copyrighted  by  the  Macmillan  Company,  Publishers. 


84  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 

“Booth  led  boldly  with  his  big  bass  drum — 

(Are  you  washed  in  the  blood  of  the  Lamb?) 

The  saints  smiled  gravely  and  they  said  ‘He’s  come* 
(Are  you  washed  in  the  blood  of  the  Lamb?) 

Walking  lepers  followed,  rank  on  rank. 

Lurching  bravoes  from  the  ditches  dank, 

Drabs  from  the  alleyways  and  drug  fiends  pale — 
Minds  still  passion  ridden,  soul  powers  frail — 
Vermin-eaten  saints  with  moldy  breath, 

Unwashed  legions  with  the  ways  of  Death — 

(Are  you  washed  in  the  blood  of  the  Lamb?)” 

Then  in  a  few  final  words  Hilton  pictured 
Booth’s  vast  dream  of  triumphantly  evangel¬ 
izing  the  whole  world.  With  all  his  social 
work  Booth  never  doubted  that  the  funda¬ 
mental  matter  is  to  bring  every  individual  man 
and  woman  and  child  into  right  relations  with 
God.  Everything  else  comes  from  that. 
Dreaming  this  dream  of  world-wide  evangelism 
Booth  left  his  footprints  on  every  continent. 
There  are  living  monuments  to  his  successful 
evangelism  in  every  city  in  the  world.  He 
knew  that  if  you  give  men  a  heart  of  peace 
and  a  heart  of  love  and  a  heart  of  triumph, 
they  can  renew  every  aspect  of  the  life  of  the 
world.  He  was  the  Napoleon  of  evangelists 
because  he  planned  and  worked  upon  a  world¬ 
wide  scale.  His  armies  fought  in  every  con- 


GENERAL  WILLIAM  BOOTH 


85 


tinent.  They  won  victories  wherever  men  felt 
the  pain  and  the  burden  and  the  bewilderment 
and  the  tragedy  of  life.  The  sword  of  the 
great  old  General  is  at  rest.  But  the  fight  is 
still  on. 

When  the  paper  came  to  an  end  nearly  every 
member  of  the  club  seemed  to  want  to  speak. 
Tribute  and  criticism,  enthusiasm  and  depre¬ 
ciation  mingled  in  their  speech.  Bowen  Tillman 
was  unqualified  in  his  approval. 

“Booth  knew  the  secret.  We  must  learn  it 
from  him,”  he  said. 

Waldo  Bryant  was  full  of  hesitations. 

“Why  must  you  violate  the  canons  of  good 
taste  in  order  to  do  what  is  good  for  the  soul?” 
he  asked. 

Hunter  Morrison  mingled  criticism  and 
praise. 

“I  admire  his  social  work,”  he  said.  “But 
what  an  old  autocrat  he  was!  The  Czar  was 
not  so  absolute.” 

Baldwin  Paxton  broke  in  unexpectedly  here: 

“You  have  to  have  authority  if  you  are  going 
to  have  efficiency,”  he  said.  “There  is  a  kind 
of  democracy  for  which  you  pay  by  being 
unable  to  do  anything  deep  or  permanent  in 
the  life  of  the  world.” 


86  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


Coulton  Moore  was  full  of  eager  praise  for 
the  way  in  which  Booth  understood  the  people 
society  never  appreciates.  “He  had  enough  of 
the  heart  of  a  Bohemian  to  know  that  Bohemia 
produces  princes,”  he  declared. 

Henry  Alton  now  entered  the  lists. 

“Men  like  Booth  leave  much  for  others  to 
do.  They  are  like  men  who  plow.  They  turn 
up  a  good  deal  of  soil  which  does  not  look  very 
inviting.  They  are  like  men  who  sow  seed. 
There  is  nothing  particularly  artistic  about  the 
seed  or  the  soil.  But  they  are  necessary  if 
you  are  going  to  have  the  beautiful  and  golden 
harvest  which  so  charms  the  fastidious,  aesthetic 
eye.”  He  looked  with  a  wry  little  smile  at 
Bryant. 

It  was  Hilton  who  added  the  final  word. 

“The  wonder  of  the  love  of  God  never 
faded  in  the  mind  of  Booth/5  he  said.  “He 
had  the  mind  of  a  great  organizer  and  he  kept 
the  heart  of  an  eager  child.  It  was  the  child’s 
heart  in  him  which  spoke  to  the  child’s  heart 
of  the  world.” 


XI.  “SAINT  WILLIAM  AND  THE 
DRAGON” 

Baldwin  Paxton  was  usually  calm.  He  was 
more  than  that.  He  was  precise.  He  was 
meticulous  in  the  carefulness  of  his  writing 
and  even  of  his  speech.  But  to-day  there  was 
a  little  flush  of  red  in  his  cheek.  There  was  an 
unusual  vibrancy  in  his  voice.  And  some  of  his 
sentences  betrayed  an  unusual  inrush  of  feeling. 
It  was  evident  that  he  was  deeply  stirred. 

The  Twelve  Merry  Fishermen  sat  about  the 
table  in  characteristic  attitudes.  Usually  a 
paper  by  Paxton  was  very  informing  but  not  at 
all  exciting.  Everybody  came  to  the  club  feeling 
comfortable  and  friendly.  They  were  going  to 
have  a  good  time  and  listen  to  a  good  paper. 
But  the  moment  Baldwin  Paxton  announced 
his  subject  the  men  sat  a  little  straighter 
and  a  new  interest  came  into  their  eyes. 

“I  shall  discuss  ‘The  Attack  on  Science/  99 
the  reader  of  the  day  began. 

Baldwin  Paxton  was  more  than  familiar 
with  the  history  of  his  subject.  He  began 
with  a  general  outline  in  which  he  was  obvi¬ 
ously  much  indebted  to  Dr.  Andrew  D.  White’s 

87 


88  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


History  of  the  Warfare  of  Science  with  Theology 
in  Christendom ,  and  in  dealing  with  the  latter 
part  of  the  nineteenth  century  he  reflected 
something  of  the  mood  and  method  of  Pro¬ 
fessor  William  North  Rice’s  Christian  Faith  in 
an  Age  of  Science.  He  paid  loving  tribute  to 
the  life  and  labors  of  Charles  Darwin,  referring 
with  much  appreciation  to  the  fine  influence  of 
Dr.  S.  Parkes  Cadman’s  book  Charles  Darwin 
and  Other  English  Thinkers.  Step  by  step  he 
moved  through  the  story  of  the  struggles  of 
the  great  representatives  of  precise  observation 
and  accurate  thinking  from  the  days  of  Roger 
Bacon  through  the  time  of  Galileo  on  to  the 
storm  which  burst  about  the  head  of  the 
scientific  thinkers  in  the  last  half  of  the  nine¬ 
teenth  century.  It  was  evident  that  devotion 
to  the  finding  and  the  expressing  of  truth  was 
a  central  part  of  the  religion  of  Baldwin  Paxton. 
The  great  scientists  were  his  saints.  The  men 
who  obstructed  their  path  were  the  men  of 
evil  spirit  whose  influence  should  be  cast  out 
of  the  world.  He  spoke  of  the  infinite  patience 
of  scientific  investigation,  of  its  noble  hesita¬ 
tion  and  caution,  of  the  fashion  in  which 
slowly  and  with  endless  pains  the  significant 
facts  were  collected  and  at  last  upon  a  sound 


“SAINT  WILLIAM  AND  THE  DRAGON”  89 


foundation  the  structure  of  generalization  was 
built.  He  told  the  tale  of  the  superstitions 
cast  out  by  science  and  the  new  and  helpful 
knowledge  which  science  has  poured  bounti¬ 
fully  into  the  lap  of  humanity.  He  pictured 
science  as  a  priestess  who  was  to  save  the 
world  from  ignorance  and  folly  and  failure  and 
point  the  way  to  stable  and  orderly  life.  Then 
he  came  to  the  matter  which  it  was  evident 
had  inspired  the  paper.  He  took  up  the  attack 
Mr.  William  Jennings  Bryan  has  put  forth  in 
many  places  and  ways,  perhaps  most  character¬ 
istically  in  the  James  Sprunt  Lectures,  pub¬ 
lished  under  the  title  In  His  Image.  The 
position  of  Mr.  Bryan  was  summed  up  in  his 
own  words:  “I  have  called  attention  to  the 
destructive  influence  exerted  by  the  doctrine 
of  evolution,  as  applied  to  man,  and  have 
pointed  out  how  Darwinism  weakens  faith  in 
God,  makes  a  mockery  of  prayer,  undermines 
belief  in  immortality,  reduces  Christ  to  the 
stature  of  a  man,  lessens  the  sense  of  brother¬ 
hood,  and  encourages  brutishness.”  From  this 
summary  Paxton  proceeded  to  a  close  analysis 
of  the  chapter  of  Mr.  Bryan’s  book  dealing 
with  the  origin  of  man.  He  declared  that  Mr. 
Bryan  confused  every  issue  he  raised,  set  in 


90  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


false  light  the  movements  he  discussed,  and 
showed  himself  completely  unable  to  under¬ 
stand  the  scientific  mind  and  the  scientific 
method.  He  described  Mr.  Bryan’s  views  of 
the  Bible  as  a  set  of  mechanical  conceptions 
which  could  not  be  brought  to  the  test  pro¬ 
vided  by  the  biblical  documents  and  could  not 
survive  even  a  little  candid  investigation. 
Then  he  came  as  near  to  being  eloquent  as 
was  ever  possible  to  this  quiet  man  with  his 
precise  mind  as  he  described  the  larger  uni¬ 
verse,  the  larger  thought  of  man,  and  the 
more  vital  thought  of  God  which  the  general 
position  of  scientific  evolutionists  has  made 
possible.  “Science  has  rescued  the  Bible  from 
the  artificial  hair-splitting  of  scholasticism.  It 
has  rescued  theology  from  the  barren  distinc¬ 
tions  of  an  arid  type  of  metaphysics.  It  has 
put  a  growing  man  in  a  vast  and  potential 
world.  And  it  has  revealed  a  mighty  and 
orderly  universe  in  which  it  is  easy  for  the 
Christian  to  find  a  mightier  and  more  worthy 
God  than  he  ever  knew  before.” 

So  the  paper  closed.  And  there  was  the 
light  of  a  great  eagerness  for  talk  in  the  eyes 
of  every  one  of  the  men  who  sat  about  the 
table.  It  was  Tom  Tabor  who  began: 


“SAINT  WILLIAM  AND  THE  DRAGON”  91 


“I  haven’t  any  illusions  about  Mr.  Bryan,” 
he  said.  “I  think  he  has  a  provincial  mind 
attached  to  a  gift  for  rhetoric  and  a  capacity 
for  the  coining  of  clever  phrases.  But  that 
isn’t  all  there  is  of  Mr.  Bryan.  And  I  don’t 
like  to  lose  the  man  in  the  Don  Quixote.  He 
isn’t  all  the  while  fighting  windmills.  There  is 
a  wealth  of  shrewd,  homely  wisdom  about  him. 
He  is  sound  about  every  fundamental  matter 
of  morals.  And  if  you  leave  out  one  or  two 
chapters  and  an  occasional  paragraph  the  book 
In  His  Image  is  packed  with  the  sort  of  sound 
practical  talk  it  is  good  for  young  men  to 
hear.  I  don’t  think  Saint  William  can  con¬ 
quer  the  modern  dragons,  but  I  do  think  he’s 
a  good,  solid  man  for  all  that.” 

“All  of  which  makes  him  the  more  dangerous 
when  he  is  in  a  field  of  wdiich  he  knows  less  than 
nothing,”  broke  in  Hunter  Morrison,  bitterly. 
“I  am  not  keen  about  the  type  of  decadent  criti¬ 
cism  represented  by  a  book  like  Main  Street. 
But  a  man  like  Mr.  Bryan  reminds  us  that 
there  is  a  Main-Street  mind  whose  provincial 
cocksureness  and  untutored  egotism  is  a  men¬ 
ace  to  the  intellectual  life  of  the  republic.” 

“I  suppose  you  would  prefer  the  emancipa¬ 
tion  of  H.  L.  Mencken  with  a  world  which 


92  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


smiles  in  superior  wisdom  at  the  Ten  Com¬ 
mandments  to  the  moral  order  in  which  Mr. 
Bryan  believes  that  he  lives,”  threw  in  Fletcher 
Hilton,  in  a  tone  whose  caustic  cut  was  re¬ 
lieved  by  the  friendly  light  in  his  eye. 

Bowen  Tillman  entered  the  lists  at  the 
moment. 

“That  is  just  part  of  the  tragedy  of  the 
whole  situation.  It  isn’t  true  that  only  a  pro¬ 
vincial  can  be  a  man  of  moral  passion.  But  a 
man  like  Mr.  Bryan  makes  it  easy  for  a  good 
many  perplexed  young  people  to  think  that 
it  is  so.  And  it  is  a  travesty  on  the  facts  to 
claim  that  only  a  man  who  refused  to  live  in 
the  modern  world  can  believe  in  the  power 
of  God  and  the  potency  of  Christ.  But  Mr. 
Bryan  puts  many  a  person  in  the  position  of 
supposing  that  this  is  true.  He  is  raising  false 
dilemmas  all  the  while.  Again  and  again  he 
says  This  or  that’  when  he  ought  to  say  This 
and  that.’  ” 

Monroe  Burton  was  listening  intently.  Now 
he  spoke. 

“I  am  interested  in  Mr.  Bryan  rather  as  a 
symptom  than  as  a  physician,”  he  said.  “And 
I  find  him  a  very  significant  symptom.  He 
represents  the  impatience  of  the  popular  mind 


44  SAINT  WILLIAM  AND  THE  DRAGON”  93 


with  all  thinking  which  robs  life  of  inspiration 
and  depletes  its  moral  vigor  and  lessens  its 
spiritual  dynamic.  His  diagnosis  may  be  in¬ 
correct.  He  may  misplace  his  attack.  But 
he  does  reflect  an  actual  situation.  And  we 
must  get  a  correct  diagnosis  and  deal  with 
the  disease  in  an  adequate  way.” 

Fletcher  Hilton  spoke  again :  “I  was  interested 
in  the  bitter  attack  upon  Darwin  which  one 
finds  in  Harold  Begbie’s  Life  of  General  William 
Booth.  He  surely  represents  a  very  different 
type  of  mind  and  a  much  more  cosmopolitan 
spirit.  Yet  he  too  hurled  his  spear  in  the 
direction  of  the  author  of  the  Descent  of  Man” 

Baldwin  Paxton  spoke  a  little  more  quickly 
than  was  his  wont. 

“Of  course  Darwin  could  not  say  every¬ 
thing.  And,  of  course,  one  method  unchecked 
and  unsupplemented  does  become  dangerous. 
Nietzsche  represents  one  Darwinian  principle 
gone  mad.  But  it  is  not  right  to  blame  Darwin 
for  that.  Prince  Kropotkin’s  Mutual  Aid  gives 
you  the  supplementing  principle  and  would 
save  any  man  from  the  mistakes  of  Nietzsche. 
With  all  his  wide  reading  Begbie  goes  off  on 
a  tangent  when  he  talks  of  Darwin.” 

Morris  MacDonald  was  smiling  a  little  in 


94  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


his  quiet  way.  And  when  he  spoke  the  men 
were  willing  to  let  him  have  the  last  word  of 
the  afternoon. 

“It  is  necessary  to  discriminate.  There  is  a 
science  which  sees  in  the  uniformities  of  nature 
the  expression  of  a  mechanical  and  self-sufficient 
system  of  impersonal  forces.  There  is  a  science 
which  sees  in  the  laws  of  nature  the  methods 
of  God.  One  would  slay  the  ethical  and  spiritual 
life  of  the  world.  The  other  will  enrich  it. 
There  is  a  view  of  evolution  which  always 
interprets  the  higher  in  the  terms  of  the  lower. 
It  deserves  rather  hard  words.  There  is  a 
type  of  evolution  which  always  interprets  the 
lower  in  the  terms  of  the  higher.  It  is  in 
happy  harmony  with  every  sanction  of  the 
Christian  faith.  There  is  a  view  of  the  Bible 
which  treats  it  as  a  corpse  in  order  to  dissect 
it.  There  is  a  view  of  the  Bible  which  regards 
it  as  a  living  organism  of  spiritual  power,  and 
with  all  its  remorseless  analysis  and  study 
never  forgets  the  informing  and  inspiring  spirit. 
Science  may  be  destructive  and  it  may  be 
constructive  in  all  of  these  things.  Scientists 
are  like  poets.  There  are  a  good  many  kinds. 
And  you  cannot  attack  poetry  because  of  the 
bad  poets.” 


XII.  THE  SCHOLAR  AND  THE  PROPHET 


Somebody  had  been  criticizing  theological 
seminaries.  In  fact,  a  number  of  people  had 
been  saying  and  writing  things  which  the 
most  optimistic  and  friendly  person  could  not 
call  complimentary.  Caustic  and  clever  articles 
had  been  appearing  in  widely  read  weeklies, 
and  popular  masters  of  the  platform  had  been 
having  their  own  easy  and  quickly  applauded 
fling.  The  schools  of  divinity  were  under  fire. 
Morris  MacDonald  was  much  stirred  by  it  all, 
and  it  was  in  the  midst  of  the  little  storm  that 
he  came  to  the  club  with  a  paper  on  “The 
Scholar  and  the  Prophet.” 

The  men  sat  about  the  table  in  attitudes 
which  expressed  a  good  deal  of  relish.  Mac¬ 
Donald  was  always  thoughtful  with  a  brilliant 
edge  of  fire  blazing  about  the  thought.  And 
when  he  was  really  roused  you  could  see  mighty 
combat  in  the  fiery  furnace  of  his  mind. 

He  began  by  describing  the  shrewd  and 
vital  eloquence  of  the  men  of  the  pioneer 
period.  You  felt  their  nearness  to  all  the  hard 
actualities  of  that  primitive  life.  You  sensed 

95 


96  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


the  rugged  strength  of  their  bodies.  You  saw 
the  human  heartiness  of  their  bearing  and  the 
easy  comradeship  which  came  from  their  per¬ 
fect  understanding  of  the  life  about  them. 
And  you  felt  the  impact  of  that  simple  and 
childlike  faith  which  entered  the  very  Holy 
of  holies  and  came  back  entirely  sure  of  God 
and  able  to  speak  of  him  with  commanding 
authenticity. 

Then  MacDonald  described  the  development 
of  more  highly  articulated  forms  of  life.  He 
followed  the  trails  of  that  expanding  activity 
which  conquered  a  continent  and  made  the 
way  for  a  more  sophisticated  civilization. 
Then  he  flung  out  upon  larger  highways  and 
described  the  revolutions  which  were  affecting 
the  intellectual  life  of  the  whole  world.  He 
held  particularly  to  the  story  of  the  critical 
analysis  of  the  documents  which  go  to  make 
up  the  Old  Testament  and  the  New.  The 
unearthing  of  J.  E.  D.  and  P.  in  the  Hexateuch, 
the  mining  in  that  mighty  mass  of  prophecies 
which  is  called  the  book  of  Isaiah,  and  the 
discovery  of  the  great  unknown  prophet  of  the 
exile  were  discussed.  Then  in  rapid  and 
trenchant  phrase  the  hearers  were  carried 
through  the  outstanding  matters  of  debate  in 


SCHOLAR  AND  PROPHET 


97 


the  criticism  of  the  books  which  come  from  the 
older  and  the  newer  dispensation.  All  this 
was  seen  as  a  by-product  of  that  scientific 
movement  of  the  human  mind  whose  great 
devotion  was  accuracy  and  whose  high  enthusi¬ 
asm  was  the  candid  following  of  truth  wherever 
it  led.  He  moved  out  into  a  discussion  of  that 
historical  science  which  is  based  upon  an 
almost  microscopic  consideration  of  all  the 
source  materials  and  upon  the  basis  of  the 
most  prolonged  and  careful  appraisal  of  the 
materials,  a  gradual  and  sure  rising  to  those 
generalizations  which  constitute  the  structure  of 
history  as  it  moves  toward  completion.  It  is 
in  this  atmosphere  that  the  well-trained  college 
man  of  to-day  lives  and  moves  and  has  his 
being.  Such  a  man  sits  in  the  pew  and  a  man 
with  the  same  training  and  a  man  wdio  under¬ 
stands  all  of  his  passwords  must  be  in  the 
pulpit.  It  is  the  task  of  the  contemporary 
theological  seminary  to  train  the  student 
formed  in  this  modern  mold  in  such  a  fashion 
that  he  will  come  forth  a  prophet. 

That  there  are  certain  intrinsic  difficulties 
must  be  frankly  admitted.  The  mood  of  metic¬ 
ulous  and  detailed  accuracy  of  observation  and 
of  poised  judicial  estimate  is  not  just  that  of 


98  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


the  passionate  interpreter  of  a  flaming  passion. 
Professor  Paul  Shorey’s  notable  phrase,  4 The 
passionate  pursuit  of  passionless  perfection,”  is 
at  least  capable  of  being  interpreted  as  the 
description  of  a  process  which  might  eventuate 
in  the  production  of  an  exquisite  marble  statue 
but  hardly  in  a  man  pulsing  with  the  pas¬ 
sionate  energy  of  a  great  evangel.  There  may 
seem  to  be  a  deep  gulf  fixed  between  the  expert 
scholar  fearing  nothing  so  much  as  the  fleck 
of  a  personal  prejudice  upon  his  judgment  and 
the  flaming  herald  blowing  all  the  trumpets 
which  call  into  action  the  deepest  feelings  of 
men.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  the  prophet 
is  never  safe  without  the  scholar.  And  the 
scholar  is  never  safe  without  the  prophet. 
Scholarship  without  the  fires  of  a  great  enthusi¬ 
asm  for  commanding  ideals  becomes  hard  and 
cold  and  scholastic.  It  becomes  the  petty 
preoccupation  with  insignificant  details.  It  be¬ 
comes  a  double  entry  bookkeeping  of  the  mind 
which  has  lost  creative  enthusiasm  and  dis¬ 
criminating  insight.  And  prophecy  without 
scholarship  becomes  a  thing  of  overgrown  and 
tropical  luxuriance,  a  mood  of  hot  feeling 
untutored  and  untempered  by  the  discipline  of 
a  careful  regard  for  facts  and  patient  pursuit 


SCHOLAR  AND  PROPHET 


99 


of  truth.  It  becomes  hectic  and  fanatical  at 
last  and  loses  the  respect  and  regard  of  sober 
and  solid  men.  The  theological  seminary  is  to 
perform  the  nuptials  of  poise  and  passion. 
It  is  to  inspire  the  accuracy  of  the  painstaking 
scholar  and  the  passion  of  the  enthusiastic 
messenger  of  the  evangel. 

There  is  only  one  way  in  which  this  can  be 
done.  The  student  who  is  learning  to  know 
truth  through  the  discipline  of  patient  research 
must  all  the  while  be  learning  to  know  God 
in  the  honest  wonder  of  a  personal  fellowship. 
The  growth  of  his  mind  power  to  classify  facts 
must  at  every  point  be  paralleled  by  the  growth 
of  his  inner  life  in  the  apprehension  of  the 
eternal  realities.  It  is  the  glory  of  the  true 
school  of  divinity  that  in  its  halls  scholarship 
is  baptized  with  devotion  and  spiritual  passion 
is  stabilized  by  patient  research  and  unhesi¬ 
tating  candor  of  mind.  The  man  who  unites 
the  accuracy  of  the  scholar  and  the  creative 
energy  of  the  man  who  has  learned  the  secrets 
of  the  inner  communion  has  the  future  of  the 
church  and  the  inspiration  of  the  world  in  his 
hands. 

The  final  paragraphs  of  MacDonald’s  paper 
were  taken  up  with  a  sharp  rebuke  of  those 


100  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


who  would  chain  the  mind  of  the  church  and 
of  the  other  group  which  would  discredit  all 
the  insight  of  the  hour  of  the  hidden  com¬ 
munion.  Then  in  wTords  quick  with  his  own 
conviction  he  portrayed  the  work  of  the  school 
alive  in  mind  and  in  heart  which  trained  the 
preachers  and  the  leaders  of  a  fearless  church, 
a  church  fearless  in  mind  because  it  saw  be¬ 
fore  it  always  the  presence  of  its  living  Lord. 

The  men  were  not  quick  to  speak  at  the 
close  of  the  paper.  But  at  length  Bowen 
Tillman  broke  the  silence. 

“It  was  Dale  who  did  the  thing  for  me,” 
he  said.  “I  frankly  confess  that  I  came  out 
of  theological  school  a  bit  confused.  Then  I 
got  into  The  Living  Christ  and  the  Four  Gospels , 
and  before  I  had  finished  it  Dale  had  given 
me  a  platform  upon  wdiicli  to  stand.  No 
doubt  much  has  happened  in  New  Testament 
criticism  since  that  time.  But  I  venture  to 
believe  that  the  fundamental  principles  an¬ 
nounced  in  this  book  hold  true  in  spite  of  all 
the  changes  through  which  we  have  passed.” 

“It  was  the  lecture  on  ‘Inspiration*  in  James 
Denney’s  Studies  in  Theology  which  gave  me  a 
standing  ground,”  said  Fletcher  Hilton.  “And 
as  long  as  Denney  lived  he  was  a  sort  of  light- 


SCHOLAR  AND  PROPHET 


101 


house  to  me.  The  prophet’s  passion  and  the 
scholar’s  careful  research  characterized  him  to 
the  very  end.” 

“If  this  is  to  be  an  experience  meeting, 
Coleridge  did  it  for  me,”  added  Waldo  Bryant. 
“His  one  phrase,  ‘the  Bible  finds  me,’  marked 
an  epoch  in  my  life.” 

“And  it  was  Peter  Forsyth  who  helped  me 
to  find  myself,”  said  James  Clayton.  “One 
series  of  lectures  which  I  heard  him  deliver 
gave  me  a  knowledge  of  the  path  where  I 
found  both  certainty  and  freedom.” 

“William  Newton  Clarke  was  my  guide, 
philosopher  and  friend,”  said  Hunter  Morrison. 
“He  joined  sweetness  and  light  and  spiritual 
conviction  in  a  way  which  gave  me  just  what 
I  needed.” 

“Henry  Drummond  gave  me  the  clue,”  said 
Tom  Tabor.  “It  was  not  so  much  anything 
he  said  as  the  attitude  which  he  taught  me. 
And  that  attitude  has  been  the  thing  I  have 
needed  all  the  while.” 

“Lyman  Abbott  said  the  thing  I  needed  ‘in 
my  hour  of  stress  and  strain,’  ”  said  Coulton 
Moore.  “He  did  for  me  what  Drummond  did 
for  Tabor.  It  was  not  ideas  I  needed.  It 
was  a  spirit.  And  he  gave  me  the  spirit.” 


102  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


Benny  Malone  was  chuckling  quietly: 

“I  fancy  different  things  were  done  by  these 
different  men.  For  they  did  live  in  rather 
different  worlds,”  he  said. 

“At  least,”  added  Henry  Alton,  “these  men 
all  made  it  easier  for  eager  truth-seeking  minds 
to  find  a  path  in  an  age  of  transition.  And 
it  was  a  great  service,  different  as  were  their 
methods  and  far  apart  as  they  were  in  many 
theological  positions.” 

“But  what  about  the  divinity  schools?” 
asked  Benny  Malone. 

“They  are  sure  to  produce  the  scholars. 
We  may  have  to  help  them  to  produce  the 
preachers,”  said  Fletcher  Hilton. 

There  was  a  curious  half-hostile  light  in 
Morris  MacDonald’s  eye.  But  he  said  no 
more  that  day. 


XIII.  THE  FAITH  ONCE  DELIVERED 
AND  OFTEN  INTERPRETED 

The  Lenten  period  was  approaching  and 
every  man  in  the  Club  was  busy  in  his  own 
way  with  the  task  of  preparing  to  show  forth 
anew  the  vitality  of  the  ancient  faith  in  the 
new  age.  They  held  many  different  positions 
in  matters  of  fundamental  philosophy  and  in 
matters  of  method.  But  in  each  man’s  heart 
burned  the  fire  of  a  deep  devotion,  and  each 
was  consumingly  eager  to  be  a  compelling 
voice  as  well  as  a  trusted  guide  in  the  church. 
So  it  came  about  that  there  was  something 
subtly  different  about  the  atmosphere  of  the 
meeting  as  they  gathered  on  this  particular 
day.  Perhaps  this  was  partly  owing  to  the 
fact  that  Morris  MacDonald  once  again  was 
to  read  the  paper.  He  made  his  chair  of  sys¬ 
tematic  theology  a  place  all  shining  with  the 
wonder  of  the  gospel,  and  quick  with  the  sense 
of  every  potent  movement  in  contemporary 
thought,  and  full  of  the  energy  of  close  and 
painstaking  dialectic.  When  he  came  to  the 
Club  with  a  paper  the  men  knew  that  in  some 

103 


104  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


arresting  fashion  they  would  see  the  Eternal 
making  itself  at  home  in  the  midst  of  the 
temporal. 

The  typewritten  manuscript  which  Mac¬ 
Donald  held  in  his  hand  was  a  model  of 
neatness  and  good  typing.  He  was  always  fas¬ 
tidious  about  these  things.  Malone  once  de¬ 
clared  that  he  had  the  mind  of  an  intellectual 
viking  and  the  precise  habits  of  one’s  maiden 
aunt.  His  voice  had  a  touch  of  that  uncon¬ 
scious  quality  of  authority  which  comes  from 
years  of  research  and  thought  and  teaching. 

Very  quietly  but  with  a  certain  arresting 
note  in  his  speech  MacDonald  read  his  subject, 
“Three  Little  Books  and  the  Changing  World.” 
The  books  were  these :  The  Reasonableness  of  the 
Christian  Faith ,  by  Professor  David  S.  Cairns, 
of  Aberdeen;  The  Divine  Initiative ,  by  Pro¬ 
fessor  H.  R.  Mackintosh,  of  Edinburgh;  and 
The  Universality  of  Christ ,  by  William  Temple, 
the  Bishop  of  Manchester. 

The  paper  began  with  a  statement  of  the 
fashion  in  which  each  age  inevitably  produces 
its  own  interpretation  of  the  Christian  faith. 
This  does  not  mean  that  a  new  faith  is  created 
for  each  age.  There  is  a  marvelous  continuity 
in  spite  of  all  the  differences.  The  Summa  of 


THE  FAITH  ONCE  DELIVERED  105 


Saint  Thomas  Aquinas  is  different  enough 
from  the  Institutes  of  John  Calvin.  But, 
after  all,  it  is  one  faith  about  which  they  are 
talking.  Yet,  in  spite  of  all  the  subtle  con¬ 
tinuity  from  Paul  to  Augustine  and  from 
Augustine  to  Luther,  it  remains  true  that  the 
deep  and  throbbing  experience  of  each  age 
must  be  caught  up  and  utilized  by  the  inter¬ 
preters  of  the  Christian  faith.  Feudalism  gives 
thought  forms  to  Anselm  and  it  is  Hugo 
Grotius,  the  founder  of  international  law,  who 
interprets  the  death  of  Christ  in  the  terms  of 
public  justice. 

In  every  age  Christianity  comes  to  new  power 
when  once  the  men  who  understand  and  love 
the  age  and  who  also  understand  and  love  the 
Christian  faith  express  the  two  together  in 
words  which  speak  in  the  very  vernacular  of 
the  time  and  yet  ring  with  the  ageless  splendor 
of  the  Christian  religion.  The  three  little  books 
by  Professor  Cairns,  Professor  Mackintosh,  and 
Bishop  Temple  show  in  an  informal  and  yet  in  an 
earnest  way  how  this  work  is  being  done  to-day. 
And  it  is  important  to  remember  that  each  book 
had  its  origin  in  addresses  delivered  to  groups 
of  young  university  students  eager  to  find  their 
way  in  this  fascinating  and  chaotic  time. 


106  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


MacDonald  took  time  to  call  attention  to 
the  fashion  in  which  each  of  the  authors  with 
whom  he  was  dealing  heartily  accepted  the 
accredited  results  of  modern  biblical  scholar¬ 
ship  and  was  cordially  friendly  to  all  the  close 
and  careful  habits  of  the  scientific  mind.  This 
friendliness  did  not  mean  an  uncritical  accept¬ 
ance  of  any  position  propounded  by  some 
scientific  authority.  It  did  mean  the  most 
eager  belief  that  there  is  no  impassable  gulf 
between  the  scientist  and  the  Christian.  There 
are  not  two  kinds  of  truth  in  the  world.  There 
are  two  and  more  than  two  characteristic  ways 
of  approaching  one  truth.  The  eye  and  the 
ear  do  not  fight  because  they  have  different 
processes  of  access  to  reality.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  each  needs  the  other. 

There  was  a  brief  characterization  of  each 
of  the  three  books:  the  brilliant  literary  style 
of  Cairns  with  its  flashes  of  color  and  all  his 
skill  in  showing  that  the  riddle  of  the  world 
was  only  made  vaster  by  the  rejection  of 
Christianity,  that  science  itself  in  all  its  creative 
work  takes  leaps  of  faith  and  then  verifies  by 
slow  processes  of  testing  the  data,  his  tri¬ 
umphant  conclusion  that  the  one  life  and  the 
one  deed  do  release  forces  whose  authenticity 


THE  FAITH  ONCE  DELIVERED  107 


can  be  verified  in  history — all  these  things 
were  set  forth  with  a  certain  vivid  power.  The 
lofty  dialectic  of  Mackintosh,  his  marshaling 
of  the  elements  of  human  need,  his  setting 
forth  of  the  elements  of  the  divine  response, 
his  portrayal  of  the  human  meeting  of  the 
deed  of  God  in  history,  his  masterly  setting 
forth  of  the  corporate  quality  of  the  Christian 
faith;  this  Calvinism  refined  and  filled  with 
generous  human  passion  was  presented  by 
MacDonald  with  a  certain  passion  of  his  own; 
then  the  closely  wrought  structure  of  Bishop 
Temple’s  philosophical  argument  was  outlined: 
his  vigorous  contention  that  the  universal  must 
become  concrete  if  it  is  to  have  any  actual 
meaning  in  the  life  of  men,  that  only  spirit  can 
interpret  matter,  that  only  love  can  express 
the  universal  in  every  conceivable  human 
relationship — all  this  leading  to  the  conclusion 
that  there  is  the  most  definite  possibility  and 
actuality  in  respect  of  a  universal  religion; 
and  concluding  with  the  test  of  the  work  of 
the  Christian  faith  on  the  field  of  history, 
asserting  that  negatively  the  un-Christian  thing 
always  goes  down  and  that  Christianity  has 
renewed  the  world  in  just  so  much  as  it  has 
been  really  taken  seriously :  the  careful  processes 


108  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


of  the  highly  trained  thinker  were  reflected  both 
in  the  material  with  which  MacDonald  dealt 
and  the  way  in  which  he  handled  it.  By 
many  a  happy  detailed  quotation  he  showed 
how  the  three  men  were  at  home  in  every 
aspect  of  contemporary  thought  and  feeling 
and  action,  and  how,  in  spite  of  their  differ¬ 
ences,  they  had  the  most  amazing  fund  of 
things  in  common,  and  each  had  come  to  a 
perfectly  fresh  and  commanding  apprehension 
of  the  historic  faith.  The  sense  of  the  ultimate 
lordship  of  Christ,  the  sense  of  the  unique 
potency  of  the  deed  on  Calvary,  the  appre¬ 
hension  of  the  reign  of  personality,  of  the 
majesty  of  love  and  of  the  fellowship  of  a 
brotherhood  of  friendly  men  whose  corporate 
life  is  to  renew  the  word — these  great  and 
creative  conceptions  cease  to  be  ideas  as  we 
read  these  books.  They  become  luminous 
forces  in  the  spiritual  life.  They  become  the 
creative  inspirations  of  a  new  world.  They 
become  the  supreme  realities  of  experience. 

When  MacDonald  had  finished  there  was  a 
rather  prolonged  silence.  Henry  Alton  then 
opened  the  discussion: 

“A  paper  like  that  makes  one  believe  in  the 
renaissance  of  theology,”  he  said.  “Of  course 


THE  FAITH  ONCE  DELIVERED  109 


it  will  be  so  fresh  and  vital  a  theology  that  a 
good  many  people  will  not  recognize  it  as 
theology  at  all.  They  will  only  know  that  it 
is  wonderfully  real  and  gripping  and  mastering.55 

Waldo  Bryant  spoke  up: 

“Cairns  is  a  good  illustration  of  the  wedlock 
between  literature  and  theology.  When  a  man 
of  letters  whose  style  is  dripping  with  the 
beauties  of  the  ages  thinks  clearly  about 
religion  and  writes  about  it,  you  have  a  style 
which  is  enough  to  capture  the  most  inveterate 
hater  of  formal  doctrine.  The  men  of  letters 
are  at  last  to  save  the  theologians.55 

“At  last!  Do  you  think  a  theologian  with  a 
style  is  a  new  phenomenon?  Go  back  to 
Augustine!55  said  Tom  Tabor,  who  was  all  the 
while  enriching  his  life  at  the  fountains  of 
patristic  learning. 

“I511  admit  the  Confessions,55  replied  Bryant. 
“But  O  the  arid  deserts  through  which  theo¬ 
logians  who  did  not  know  how  to  write  have 
carried  us!55 

Baldwin  Paxton  was  waiting  to  speak  in 
his  careful  and  precise  way. 

“It  seems  to  me  that  all  the  three  men  mix 
up  imagination  and  actuality.  After  all,  there 
is  a  difference  between  a  fact  and  a  poem. 


110  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


I  do  not  find  the  metaphysics  of  an  earlier 
period  more  attractive  because  expressed  by 
men  of  charming  speech  who  have  mastered 
the  scientific  vernacular.  After  all,  they  are 
trying  to  put  the  old  wine  of  early  speculation 
into  the  new  bottles.  It  is  a  dangerous  experi¬ 
ment.  I  prefer  to  let  the  ideals  of  Jesus  stand 
in  their  own  right.  Then  his  leadership  is  not 
endangered  if  I  have  to  change  my  theory  of 
his  person  or  my  philosophy  of  the  universe.” 

“But  that’s  just  the  point,”  said  Fletcher 
Hilton.  “You  have  to  have  a  certain  set  of 
convictions  about  the  nature  of  the  universe 
and  about  Jesus  himself  if  his  ideals  are  to  be 
kept  authentic.” 

It  was  an  old  battle  between  the  two,  and 
each  was  content  on  this  particular  day  with 
bearing  witness  to  his  position. 

Hunter  Morrison  was  now  speaking: 

“I  like  these  men  because  they  do  see  that 
man  is  more  than  an  individual.  They  see 
that  he  is  a  society.  Almost  Mackintosh  per¬ 
suades  me  to  become  an  evangelical.”  This 
last  with  a  friendly  and  whimsical  look  at 
Fletcher  Hilton. 

Monroe  Burton  closed  the  discussion: 

“I  have  read  and  reread  these  books,”  he 


THE  FAITH  ONCE  DELIVERED  111 


said.  “And  the  thing  which  I  remember  most 
about  them  is  this.  Each  author  sees  that  al 
the  aspects  of  life  must  be  met  and  interpreted 
by  a  triumphant  religion.  And  so  it  is  the 
versatility  of  the  Christian  faith  which  they 
bring  to  the  reader.  It  is  not  only  as  deep 
as  the  sorest  tragedy.  It  is  as  many  sided 
as  life.  It  can  interpret  the  mind  and  the 
conscience  and  the  heart  and  the  taste.  These 
books  made  me  see  in  a  perfectly  new  way 
what  a  great  thing  it  is  to  have  the  freedom 
of  the  city  of  God.” 


XIV.  PHILOSOPHY,  EXPOSITION,  AND 

SOCIAL  PASSION 


Henry  Alton  was  reading  the  paper  of  the 
day. 

“My  theme,”  he  announced,  tersely,  “is 
‘A  Synthetic  Mind.’  ” 

“By  a  man  who  never  saw  anything  un¬ 
steadily  or  in  fragments,”  interrupted  Benny 
Malone. 

The  men  sat  expectantly  in  their  chairs. 
4 ‘Alton  is  never  so  concrete  as  when  he  is 
dealing  with  principles,  and  never  so  universal 
as  when  he  is  dealing  with  individuals,”  Morris 
MacDonald  had  declared  once.  It  was  a  com¬ 
bination  which  always  stirred  and  roused  the 
minds  of  his  hearers. 

“I  am  going  to  build  what  I  have  to  say 
about  the  life  of  a  vigorous  leader  whom  you 
all  know,”  began  Henry  Alton.  “And  the  man 
is  Bishop  Francis  J.  McConnell.” 

There  was  a  little  movement  of  quickened 
interest  at  that.  Then  the  men  settled  down 
to  listen.  The  first  part  of  the  paper  was  dis¬ 
tinctly  biographical.  It  told  the  story  of  a 

112 


PHILOSOPHY  AND  SOCL4L  PASSION  113 


deep-eyed  boy  growing  up  in  a  Methodist 
parsonage,  with  a  keen  and  masterful  preacher 
as  a  father  and  a  woman  of  brooding  mysticism 
and  solid  strength  of  character  as  a  mother. 
It  followed  the  lad  through  college  and  into 
theological  seminary.  The  theological  sem¬ 
inary  was  the  Divinity  School  of  Boston  Uni¬ 
versity.  And  the  days  were  those  when  that 
philosopher  with  the  flashing  mind  and  the 
tongue  tipped  with  ironic  flame,  Dr.  Borden 
P.  Bowne,  made  his  professor's  chair  an  intel¬ 
lectual  throne.  It  was  the  pungent  wit  of 
Professor  Bowne  which  first  attracted  young 
McConnell.  But  soon  his  own  mind  was 
awakened  and  began  to  work  as  it  had  never 
worked  before.  No  subtle  trail  of  philosophical 
exploration  was  too  difficult  for  the  keen  young 
thinker  who  responded  to  every  intellectual 
challenge  of  his  teacher  with  a  sort  of  eager 
joy.  It  is  one  thing  to  be  attracted  by  a  great 
teacher  and  follow  a  few  of  his  courses;  it  is 
quite  another  to  give  all  the  patient  industry 
and  all  the  long  pursuit  of  technical  attain¬ 
ment  required  to  become  the  master  of  the 
point  of  view  of  a  powerful  thinker.  It  was 
the  second  thing  which  McConnell  did.  He 
became  one  of  three  or  four  men  who  in  the 


114  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


whole  course  of  the  teaching  of  Dr.  Bowne 
made  his  teaching  completely  their  own.  It 
was  no  matter  of  slavish  assent.  There  was 
independence  and  there  was  constant  personal 
grapple.  But  the  able  young  man  was  wise 
enough  to  see  that  it  was  worth  his  while  to 
become  entirely  at  home  in  every  part  of  his 
teacher’s  system.  And  he  made  his  own  too 
the  tale  of  the  long  pursuit  of  philosophical 
speculation  from  the  days  of  the  first  inquiring 
Greeks.  The  whole  process  meant  everything 
in  the  direction  of  the  quickening  of  his  own 
mind  and  the  developing  of  his  own  intellectual 
life.  It  laid  a  foundation  of  solidity  and 
strength  for  whatever  mental  work  he  might 
do  in  any  field.  Before  long  he  was  a  pastor 
capable  and  able  and  devoted  to  his  work. 
He  had  more  than  a  touch  of  reserve.  He  was 
the  pastor  of  men’s  minds  more  than  of  the 
surface  life  of  thoughtlessness.  But  there  was 
a  flash  of  sympathy  from  the  depths  of  his 
personality  which  had  a  way  of  shining  out 
whenever  there  was  the  call  of  really  deep 
need.  About  this  time  he  began  to  be  a  writer 
of  Biblical  expositions.  For  years  he  inter¬ 
preted  the  Sunday-school  lessons  for  one  of 
the  widely  circulated  journals  of  the  church. 


PHILOSOPHY  AND  SOCIAL  PASSION  115 


His  work  was  something  new  in  exposition. 
He  had  the  most  astonishing  way  of  passing 
by  the  incidental  and  finding  the  essential. 
His  training  in  philosophical  dialectic  w^as  now 
beginning  to  bear  practical  fruit.  He  had  a 
straightforward,  forthright  way  of  writing. 
He  never  went  out  of  his  way  for  literary  effect. 
But  he  did  have  a  sense  of  the  power  of  a 
haunting  phrase,  and  you  never  read  far  until 
you  came  to  some  sentence  literally  gleaming 
with  vital  power.  There  was  a  keen  moving 
and  at  times  an  ironic  mind.  There  was  an 
impatience  with  make-believe  and  rhetoric 
and  hectic  feeling.  The  writing  was  just  a 
little  hard  sometimes.  But  it  was  always 
honest  and  it  was  always  capable  of  kindling 
the  mind  of  the  reader.  Nobody  knows  quite 
how  great  has  been  the  service  rendered  by 
these  expositions  carried  on  through  so  many 
years.  The  years  passed  swiftly.  Dr.  Mc¬ 
Connell  became  the  able  administrator  of  a 
growing  university.  Then  he  became  a  bishop 
of  the  Methodist  Episcopal  Church.  Through 
it  all  his  life  as  student  and  scholar  was  not 
allowed  to  suffer.  Many  books  came  from  his 
pen  as  the  years  passed.  Sometimes  it  was  a 
matter  of  philosophical  exposition  clear  and 


116  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


discerning,  as  in  The  Diviner  Immanence. 
Sometimes  it  was  a  philosophy  of  ecclesiastical 
administration,  as  in  the  biography  of  that 
noble  and  commanding  bishop,  Edward  Gayer 
Andrews.  Sometimes  it  was  a  study  of  the 
modern  man’s  relation  to  the  Bible,  as  in 
Understanding  the  Scriptures.  Sometimes  it 
was  a  wonderfully  fresh  and  original  applica¬ 
tion  of  the  principles  of  democracy  to  Chris¬ 
tian  thinking,  as  in  Public  Opinion  and  Theol¬ 
ogy.  Sometimes  it  dealt  with  the  most  per¬ 
plexing  problems  which  confront  the  man 
who  is  finding  his  way  in  this  difficult  age,  as 
in  Religious  Certainty  and  The  Increase  of 
Faith.  Sometimes  it  was  a  sympathetic  view 
of  the  preacher’s  tasks  and  problems,  as  in 
The  Preacher  and  the  People.  All  the  while 
the  thinker  and  administrator  and  ecclesiastical 
leader  was  becoming  more  and  more  a  man 
who  felt  the  burdens  and  the  tragedies  of  our 
present  social  order.  Those  who  followed  his 
keen  and  cool  and  critical  mind  saw  increasing 
evidences  of  a  growing  social  passion.  It  be¬ 
came  evident  at  last  that  a  great  fire  was  burn¬ 
ing  in  the  crucible  of  that  powerful  mind.  A 
characteristic  expression  of  this  aspect  of  Bishop 
McConnell’s  life  was  the  Report  on  the  Steel 


PHILOSOPHY  AND  SOCIAL  PASSION  117 


Strike  of  1919 ,  issued  by  a  commission  of  inquiry 
of  which  he  was  chairman.  He  now  became  a 
leader  of  the  most  commanding  influence 
among  those  who  would  persuade  the  church 
to  set  seriously  about  the  doing  of  the  will 
of  Christ  in  the  very  world  of  commerce  and 
industry  in  which  we  live. 

It  was  a  thrilling  story,  and  Henry  Alton 
told  it  well.  Then  he  came  to  the  moral  of 
his  tale.  There  are  plenty  of  philosophers. 
There  are  plenty  of  expositors.  There  are 
plenty  of  men  with  social  passion.  The  rare 
thing  is  to  get  all  these  in  one  man.  He  is 
indeed  a  man  of  synthetic  mind.  The  habits 
of  a  philosopher  steady  and  stabilize  all  his 
social  activities.  The  habit  of  seeing  the  mes¬ 
sage  of  every  part  of  the  Bible  in  relation  to 
the  principles  which  emerge  from  a  profound 
consideration  of  its  meaning  and  of  their 
relation  to  the  modern  experience  of  life  gives 
a  moral  and  spiritual  depth  to  the  intellectual 
life  and  a  new  richness  and  strength  to  the 
social  passion.  It  isn’t  a  case  of  Plato’s  desire 
that  philosophers  be  kings,  though  in  a  democ¬ 
racy  you  have  something  very  like  it  when 
philosophers  become  interpreters  and  leaders 
in  the  movement  for  the  industrial  and  social 


118  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


welfare  of  men  and  women  and  little  children. 
When  you  get  Luther  and  Erasmus  together 
in  one  man  you  have  a  notable  sort  of  leader. 

The  men  sat  silent  for  a  little  while  when 
the  paper  closed.  Then  Hunter  Morrison 
opened  the  discussion: 

“I  capitulated  to  Bishop  McConnell  a  good 
many  years  ago,”  he  said.  “I  had  been 
feeling  lonely  and  unhappy  and  wondering  if 
there  was  a  place  for  me  in  the  church.  I 
heard  one  of  the  series  of  university  lectures 
which  express  the  very  genius  of  McConnell’s 
mind.  I  knew  at  once  that  if  the  church  had 
a  place  for  him,  it  had  a  place  for  me,  and 
life  became  easier  and  happier  from  that 
time  on.” 

Waldo  Brvant  followed: 

“Bishop  McConnell  irritates  me  at  times. 
I  never  have  any  doubt  as  to  what  he  means 
to  say.  And,  as  the  Judge  has  said,  you  get 
a  live  phrase  every  other  minute.  But  why 
doesn’t  a  man  who  could  do  it  if  he  really  had 
the  desire  use  the  good  old  English  speech 
with  the  beauty  and  grace  and  charm  which 
make  it  the  thing  of  loveliness  it  is  its  genius 
to  be?” 

“I  don’t  think  he  wants  to  be  a  Matthew 


PHILOSOPHY  AND  SOCIAL  PASSION  119 


Arnold,  or  a  Walter  Pater,  or  even  a  John 
Ruskin.  It’s  a  good  solid  English  he  uses  with 
plenty  of  pith  and  virility.  He  is  about  more 
important  work  than  making  a  reproduction 
of  some  fine  old  English  garden,”  said  Monroe 
Burton. 

“I  wish  he  were  a  bit  more  of  mystic,”  said 
Fletcher  Hilton.  “Sometimes  I  think  he 
really  is  more  responsive  to  these  things  at 
heart  than  his  clear,  cool  dialectic  would  indi¬ 
cate,  and  that  he  is  really  assuming  along  these 
lines  a  good  deal  which  he  never  says.  Just 
the  same  I  wish  he  would  say  as  well  as  assume.” 

Morris  MacDonald  was  sitting  quietly  with 
his  eyes  glowing. 

“It’s  a  great  thing  to  have  him,”  he  said. 
“And  the  best  thing  you  can  say  about  him 
is  that  he  bends  a  raiad  of  the  amplest  power 
to  the  most  complete  loyalty  to  the  tasks  of 
the  Christian  enterprise  in  the  world.” 

It  was  like  Henry  Alton  to  conclude: 

“Of  course  I  was  thinking  of  Bishop  Mc¬ 
Connell.  But  I  was  not  thinking  simply  of 
him.  He  was  an  illustration  of  a  principle. 
It  is  the  synthetic  mind  which  is  to  carve  out 
the  future  of  the  world,” 


XV.  PERSONALITY  AND  PHILOSOPHIC 

THOUGHT 


Henry  Alton  was  not  always  a  particularly 
entertaining  writer.  But  he  made  up  in  pith 
what  he  lacked  in  grace.  His  voice  did  not  have 
rich  modulations  which  echoed  with  the  color 
of  human  moods,  but  it  did  have  a  certain 
solid  strength  which  made  it  very  impressive. 
Alton  was  a  man  of  deep  and  ample  erudition 
rather  than  a  technical  scholar,  though  he  did 
know  the  sources  in  one  or  two  periods  of 
philosophic  thought  fairly  well  and  he  under¬ 
stood  very  clearly  what  exact  scholarship  is. 
But  his  own  mind  brooded  over  vast  stretches 
of  human  territory  and  it  was  as  a  discrimi¬ 
nating  thinker  that  he  did  his  best  work. 
When  he  read  a  paper  before  the  club  every 
man  knew  that  he  must  come  prepared  to 
think  closely  and  to  hold  his  mind  to  finely 
drawn  distinctions.  He  also  knew  that  there 
would  emerge  at  last  a  luminous  view  of  the 
subject  discussed  seen  with  a  certain  ample 
perspective. 

The  theme  of  Henry  Alton’s  paper  on  this 

particular  day  was  “Personality  and  Philosophic 

120 


PERSONALITY 


121 


Thought.”  He  had  been  reading  the  brilliant 
Gifford  lectures  by  Professor  Clement  C.  J. 
Webb,  who  holds  the  lately  founded  chair  of 
the  philosophy  of  the  Chrisitan  religion  at 
Oxford  University.  These  two  volumes  of 
Lectures  deal  respectively  with  God  and  Per¬ 
sonality  and  Divine  Personality  and  Human 
Life.  Alton  began  by  paying  tribute  to  the 
fine  qualities  of  mind,  the  fairness  of  spirit, 
and  the  easy  mastery  of  his  materials  which 
Professor  Webb  brings  to  his  task.  He  spoke 
of  the  happy  fashion  in  which  literature  is 
made  to  give  hostages  to  philosophy  in  these 
luminous  discussions.  And  he  stopped  to 
remark  how  easily  Professor  Webb  picks  up 
matters  of  common  habit  and  expression  in 
order  to  illustrate  some  matter  of  philosophic 
import.  “All  the  while  you  feel  that  Webb 
is  a  disciplined  and  tempered  man  of  letters 
living  in  understanding  contact  with  human 
life,  who  has  applied  himself  to  the  problems 
of  philosophical  dialectic.”  He  spoke  also  of 
the  frank  and  understanding  way  in  which 
the  Lord  Gifford  lecturer  speaks  from  within 
the  circle  of  Christian  experience,  assuming 
that  only  so  can  a  man  adequately  apprehend 
the  data  and  understanding^  discuss  their  rela- 


122  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


tionships.  He  spoke  of  how  like  tempered 
steel  the  mind  of  Professor  Webb  moves  among 
the  most  subtle  philosophic  distinctions.  Only 
years  of  walking  sure  of  foot  through  the 
labyrinthine  mazes  of  metaphysical  speculation 
can  make  such  work  possible.  Then  the  author 
of  the  paper  moved  through  the  two  volumes, 
showing  how  they  followed  the  history  of  that 
thought  which  comes  to  fullness  in  our  modern 
view  of  personality  and  of  the  fashion  in  which 
the  conception  of  personality  is  analyzed  as 
it  relates  itself  to  God  and  to  human  life.  In 
the  latter  discussion  the  economic  life,  the 
scientific  life,  the  aesthetic  life,  the  moral  life, 
the  political  life,  and  the  religious  life  are 
considered.  Then  Naturalism  is  analyzed  as 
an  interpretation  which  disintegrates  person¬ 
ality  on  the  physical  side.  And  absolute  ideal¬ 
ism  is  discussed  as  an  interpretation  which 
disintegrates  personality  on  the  mental  side. 
The  temperate  discussion  of  the  belief  in 
immortality  with  which  these  Gifford  lectures 
close  came  in  for  thoughtful  treatment. 

But  it  was  evident  that  Henry  Alton  was 
making  this  scrupulously  careful  approach  for 
the  purpose  of  doing  something  more  than  to 
review  the  commanding  work  of  Professor 


PERSONALITY 


123 


Webb.  He  wanted  to  set  forth  graphically 
and  to  emphasize  its  implications.  He  moved 
out  into  an  analysis  of  the  implications  of  an 
interpretation  of  life  which  repudiates  per¬ 
sonality.  By  many  close  and  subtle  bits  of 
analysis  he  showed  that  such  an  interpretation 
is  all  the  while  driven  to  assume  the  very 
things  which  at  last  it  is  so  eager  to  deny. 
He  showed  that  what  we  mean  by  personality 
has  always  been  implicit  in  the  thinking  which 
has  been  least  conscious  of  the  meaning  of  its 
own  assumptions.  Then  he  turned  to  the 
ethical  experience  of  men  and  showed  how  its 
very  fundamental  postulate  is  that  free  and 
knowing  experience  and  choice  which  is  the 
very  nature  of  personality.  He  showed  that 
ethics  has  no  standing  ground  in  a  world 
which  is  not  definitely  personal.  He  viewed 
the  death  of  art  and  the  decay  of  religion 
which  would  inevitably  follow  any  view  of  the 
world  which  was  entirely  impersonal.  He 
lifted  the  claim  that  no  interpretation  of  life 
can  be  true  which  fails  to  give  standing  room 
to  the  whole  series  of  structural  and  essential 
human  experiences.  Then  in  a  final  piece  of 
highly  articulated  dialectic  he  showed  that  on 
the  basis  of  an  impersonal  view  of  the  universe 


124  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


you  can  never  account  for  any  system  of 
philosophy,  not  even  an  impersonal  system. 
A  man  has  to  be  a  person  in  order  to  deny 
that  he  is  a  person.  The  intellectual  life  goes 
down  as  completely  as  the  moral  and  religious 
life  in  an  impersonal  world.  But  the  mission 
of  philosophy  is  to  organize  human  experience 
into  some  harmonious  totality  of  interpreta¬ 
tion  and  not  to  deny  its  most  characteristic 
aspects.  So  an  impersonal  view  of  life  falls 
into  ruins  the  moment  you  subject  it  to  critical 
analysis.  Alton  closed  by  saying  that  the 
thing  we  mean  by  the  word  “personality”  is 
the  one  fundamental  matter  in  all  experience 
human  and  divine. 

Morris  MacDonald  with  his  Scottish  enthusi¬ 
asm  for  metaphysics  was  the  first  to  speak. 

“Here’s  to  you.  Judge,”  he  said.  “That’s  a 
piece  of  thinking  after  my  own  heart.  But, 
mind  you,  I  do  not  think  that  either  Professor 
Webb  or  his  interpreter  has  been  entirely 
just  to  Hegel  or  to  some  of  his  followers.  It 
isn’t  satisfactory  to  push  off  the  edge  of  a 
logical  dilemma  the  men  who  fought  so  superbly 
against  materialism  and  taught  the  world  to 
see  all  reality  in  the  terms  of  the  movement 
of  the  mind.” 


PERSONALITY 


125 


Baldwin  Paxton  was  moving  a  little  rest¬ 
lessly  in  his  seat. 

“Alter  all,”  he  said,  “we  know  very  little 
about  these  things  concerning  which  we  con¬ 
struct  such  learned  phrases.  We  do  know 
that  we  can  follow  certain  constant  processes 
in  the  great  order  of  nature.  Is  it  not  enough 
to  think  of  the  Master  of  Life  as  the  Father 
of  Order  and  the  mission  of  man  to  achieve 
the  harmony  of  moral  order  here?  Why  try 
to  push  the  human  mind  into  regions  where 
it  has  no  sure  data  upon  which  to  move?  It 
seems  to  me  that  all  this  emphasis  on  person¬ 
ality  very  easily  turns  into  an  enthusiasm  for 
lawlessness.  There  is  nothing  fickle  about  the 
laws  of  nature.  Personality  may  be  as  fickle 
as  some  of  the  Greek  gods.” 

Bowen  Tillman  was  ready  with  a  bit  of 
reminiscence : 

“It  all  takes  me  back  to  the  class  room  of 
Borden  P.  Bowne,”  he  said.  “His  lectures  on 
‘Personalism’  gave  my  mind  its  bent  as  far  as 
it  has  any  bent  in  things  philosophical.  His 
lectures  were  full  of  merciless  light  and  all  the 
amazing  ironic  laughter  of  the  mind.  It  was 
tremendously  good  for  a  young  man.  And  it 
put  firm  ground  beneath  no  end  of  feet.” 


126  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


Waldo  Bryant  looked  up  at  the  moment. 

“Professor  Bowne  would  not  have  been  satis¬ 
fied  with  Professor  Webb's  attitude  toward 
Personal  Idealism,”  he  said.  “In  fact,  it  seems 
to  me  that  Webb's  work  would  gain  much  in 
strength  had  he  found  it  possible  to  accept 
the  position  of  philosophic  idealism  with  per¬ 
sonality  as  its  ultimate  fact.  As  it  is  with  all 
his  fine  work,  he  hardly  escapes  dualism  at 
last.  You  feel  how  it  clips  his  wings  when  he 
comes  to  consider  the  doctrine  of  immortality.” 

Hunter  Morrison  followed  next: 

“I  have  been  reading  Webb  too,”  he  said. 
“It  seems  to  me  that  he  treats  the  new  psy¬ 
chology  rather  cavalierly.  You  can  hardly 
brush  it  aside  with  a  majestic  wave  of  the 
hand.” 

Benny  Malone  chirped  up  at  the  moment 
with  a  veritable  twitter  in  his  voice. 

“All  this  is  tremendously  solemn  and  im¬ 
pressive,”  he  said.  “As  for  me,  give  me  Berg¬ 
son’s  Creative  Evolution  or  give  me  death.  I 
like  to  live  in  a  world  where  things  can  happen. 
The  materialists  tie  me  up  so  fast  in  physical 
laws  that  nothing  can  happen.  The  absolute 
idealists  tie  me  up  so  fast  in  the  laws  of  logic 
that  nothing  can  happen.  Then  comes  Henri 


PERSONALITY 


127 


Bergson  with  his  declaration  of  independence. 
I’m  for  him.  I  will  be  caught  in  no  Webb  of 
mediaeval  dialectic.” 

“Toss  out  the  pun,”  interrupted  Fletcher 
Hilton,  amid  a  chorus  of  groans.  The  way 
of  the  punster  was  always  hard  among  the 
Twelve  Merry  Fishermen. 

Coulton  Moore  now  spoke: 

“Benny  has  said  something  in  spite  of  his 
nebulous  Webb,”  he  insisted.  “Only  I  would 
put  it  in  another  way.  I’m  only  interested  in 
philosophy  in  order  to  find  standing  room  for 
life.  And  the  pragmatists  give  me  that. 
Schiller  and  James  give  me  what  I  need.  Great 
is  pragmatism,  and  they  are  its  prophets.” 

“Go  on  to  Einstein  and  wallow  in  relativ¬ 
ity,”  shot  in  Morris  MacDonald. 

James  Clayton  now  spoke  up  in  his  thought¬ 
ful  way: 

“It  seems  to  me  that  some  of  us  are  not 
making  a  distinction  between  things  which 
sound  exciting  and  things  which  are  exciting,” 
he  said.  “Webb  is  all  the  while  trying  to 
make  room  for  the  very  freedom  and  initiative 
which  Malone  and  Moore  want  so  badly.  Only 
he  is  trying  to  get  it  in  a  world  which  has  a 
sound  basis  of  order  underneath  its  freedom. 


128  TWELVE  MERRY  FISHERMEN 


An  aeroplane  is  wonderfully  exhilarating,  but 
you  would  better  not  break  too  many  laws 
of  physics  as  you  go  up  in  the  air.  Pragmatism 
gives  you  freedom  without  law.  The  systems 
of  necessity  give  you  law  without  freedom. 
Webb  so  interprets  life  that  you  have  room 
for  free  decision  in  a  stable  and  orderly  world.” 

“All  of  which  has  been  said  so  well  that  I 
have  nothing  to  add,”  declared  Henry  Alton. 

Monroe  Burton  had  said  nothing  during  the 
discussion.  As  the  men  broke  into  little  groups 
at  the  end  of  the  meeting  some  one  noticed 
hovering  on  his  face  an  inscrutable  smile. 


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